


Chances

by pcychedelic



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst, F/M, Fluff, Friends With Benefits, Post-Break Up, Smut, i hope y'all like it though, um... i have no idea what else to put here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-19
Updated: 2018-04-19
Packaged: 2019-04-25 00:56:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 25,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14367453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pcychedelic/pseuds/pcychedelic
Summary: You treated men like a game but Chanyeol made you think twice about playing.





	1. Epigraph

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer:  
> This is a work of fanfiction (if that wasn't obvious yet). Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents may represent real entities (especially if you went to uni with me; if you did, please leave this page and never come back) but are used fictitiously as a product of the author's imagination (or lack thereof); this work does not mean them any harm or offense. This work is the intellectual property of the author and it, or any portion thereof, may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author.
> 
> Author's Note:  
> Uh... okay. I don't exactly know what to say but I'll try my best not to make a fool of myself so much. I wrote this in October 2017 and it's the first story I've written after stopping for almost or probably more than two years. This story hits very close to home (don't ask) and it's one of the few things that I've written that I can say I'm proud of (I usually have a hard time in saying I'm proud of myself). Anyway, I hope you enjoy this, even though it's literally just a remix of the story of my life.
> 
> Dedication:  
> To C, who reminded me to see the beauty in everyone and everything;  
> To A, who read the story first;  
> This is dedicated to them for making me write again.

“These violent delights have violent ends  
And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,  
Which, as they kiss, consume. The sweetest honey  
Is loathsome in his own deliciousness  
And in the taste confounds the appetite.  
Therefore love moderately. Long love doth so.  
Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.”

– William Shakespeare, Romeo & Juliet


	2. Chances

**1.**

Smoke filled your mouth and lungs as you lit another cigarette. How many have you had tonight? A pack? Maybe even two? It didn’t matter, really, since it was Thursday, the “happiest” day of the week. All sins done to your body tonight can be forgiven.

            The university you went to only had four school days, starting from Monday and ending on Thursday. Moreover, a handful of bars were only a stone’s throw away from campus. How those bars got permit from the local government despite being in close proximity with an academic institution was beyond you.

            These were the reasons behind the infamous Happy Thursday culture among the students in your university. All the parties and the drinking were so wild during this night that people who didn’t even go to your school soon got word of mouth about how lit Thursdays were at William Avenue.

            As a freshman, it was kind of like a rite of passage to experience Happy Thursday at least once in your college life. Being a sophomore and having stayed for five terms in the university, it was safe to say that the novelty of Happy Thursdays had worn off on you.

            In fact, sometimes, when your usual drinking buddies asked you out for a drink, you turned them down, lying about how you were loaded with school work when in reality you just didn’t feel like it. They say that repetition caused things to lose their value, and that was exactly how it felt for you.

            But this particular Thursday night was something else.

            You rarely prayed, but that night, you thanked God for letting yourself decide to go out with your friends because if you hadn’t, you wouldn’t have met him.

            Minseok had mentioned a few days ago about how he invited some of his new friends from his Organic Chemistry class to drink with you guys, but it totally slipped your mind. You only remembered this when he entered the bar with three guys that you hadn’t seen before in your life.

            All of them were good-looking, but the tallest one, the one who was wearing a black hoodie, was especially striking.

            Minseok waved at you and then motioned the other guys to follow him. He and a bronze-skinned guy sat on your side of the table while the other two sat oppositely.

            “Guys, this is my good friend. We’ve been friends since freshman year,” Minseok introduced you. “She’s my favorite drinking buddy.”

            You snorted. “Favorite?”

            Minseok gave you a face and the other guys laughed at the two of you teasing each other.

            He then introduced them: the tan guy was Jongin, and the guy that sat opposite him was Sehun. They were both majoring in dance.

            Minseok was about to introduce the guy in the black hoodie when the guy suddenly said, “I’m Chanyeol,” while he smiled and extended his hand to you. “It’s nice to meet you.”

            You shook his hand and you noticed that the exchange was firmer than the usual handshake. “Likewise,” you said, and all you could think about was how bright his smile was and how you felt something weird, something like faint electricity course through your fingertips the moment you touched his hand.

            “I think I’ve seen you before,” he pondered.

            “Her?” Minseok asked, pointing at you. “Really? Where? She’s not really the type to wander around though. She likes to keep to herself most of the time when she doesn’t have classes. She’s a little weird.”

            You scowled at him. “Shut up, Min.”

            Chanyeol laughed. “Nah, I think I’ve had a class with her before.” He looked at you and asked, “Did you have Mr. Lee for Literature last term?”

            A light bulb suddenly turned on inside your head. That was why Chanyeol stood out so much as soon as you saw him—not only was he somewhat good-looking, but it was also because he looked familiar.

            But the two of you had never actually talked. What Minseok said was actually true; you liked to keep to yourself most of the time and you weren’t exactly the friendly type. You had a quality over quantity kind of philosophy in life, which was why you preferred to keep your circle of friends small.

            You were charismatic enough—well, at least that was what people said about you—it was just that you were an exceptionally straightforward person and that you didn’t particularly enjoy wasting energy on people who you didn’t like. Your friends and even your brother had noticed this about you, and you took pride in being known as someone who was brutally honest and real, despite the possibility of people taking your personality the wrong way.

            “Yeah, I remember you from that class,” you nodded at Chanyeol. “You’re the guy who always came late to class and when you enter the room you don’t bother taking off your earphones.”

            “That’s right,” he laughed. “I still got good marks though.”

            “Good for you then.”

* * *

            Jongin was the first one to get wasted. Minseok and Sehun had to take him home to make sure that he wouldn’t do anything compromising while he’s drunk. Sehun had brought a car, but Minseok didn’t trust him with driving as Sehun’s eyes were questionably glassy, so he decided to do it himself.

            At first, Minseok wasn’t sure of leaving you with Chanyeol as the two of you had just met and he didn’t want to burden Chanyeol with the responsibility of being the one to take you home. Chanyeol insisted that it was okay with him, and you said that you were fine with it as well. After all, you and Chanyeol had been talking with each other all night.

            Chanyeol was a great conversationalist. You admired people who kept a conversation going as if there was nothing to be awkward about.

            He was a pretty decent drinker too. You had a pretty high tolerance for alcohol, so you would know when a person could keep their drinks down. Even though all of you had a lot to drink, you, Chanyeol, and Minseok were the only ones who still looked the same as when the night started.

            Minseok had left with Jongin and Sehun a little while ago, and you and Chanyeol left the bar as well after finishing all the drinks that you had ordered.

            As his Benz stopped at a red light, you brought out your phone to check what time it was. It was just a few minutes past midnight, a little too early to go home for a Happy Thursday.

            “I don’t want to go home yet. Do you know a place where we can eat? I’m a little hungry.” Just as you said that, your stomach growled a little loud for someone who claimed to be not that hungry.

            Chanyeol laughed. “I don’t think you’re just a _little_ hungry.”

            “Yeah, no shit,” you chuckled.

            The light turned green and Chanyeol drove forward. “There aren’t a lot of decent places to grab a bite that are open at this time, though…” He scratched the back of his head.

            “Well that sucks,” you said, and your stomach rumbled once more.

            “But if you’re really hungry, you can eat something at my place. I live pretty near,” Chanyeol suggested, keeping his eyes on the road. “I’ll drive you home after you’ve eaten.”

            Now, if any other guy had said this, it would’ve sounded like an invitation to a one-night stand. You would know; you had a lot of those. But Chanyeol said it in such a nonchalant way like he wasn’t implying anything else, like what he said was what he really meant. It was either that or you were just getting rusty in reading men. The latter seemed less probable, though, as you could read any guy like an open book after all the shitty experiences you had with them.

            You agreed to Chanyeol’s idea, and he turned his car around at the next U-turn slot.

            His place was pretty clean for a guy. You wondered if he kept it clean for the girls he brought up here, but you had been to a lot of guys’ places and none of their places looked as decent as Chanyeol’s.

            The condo unit looked relatively small, but considering the fact that Chanyeol lived alone, it seemed more than enough. It had a high ceiling that allowed a loft to have two small rooms, one being his bedroom and the other his closet.

            The living room—you figured, as there was a black loveseat against the wall—looked more like a miniature music studio: computers, instruments, soundboards, and other stuff you didn’t have a name for was all over the place.

            Chanyeol noticed you staring at his work desk. “Oh, that’s right. I forgot to mention that I’m majoring in music production. I’m on my junior year.”

            “That’s cool.”

            He gave you an amused smile. “I’ll get the food ready. I hope you like pasta,” and then he disappears to the kitchen.

            You sat in front of his work desk and turned his computer on to check out the kind of music he’s been working on. Your brother was also a music production major in his third year of college, and you wondered if he and Chanyeol knew each other.

            They even used the same software, making it easier for you to navigate yourself through it as you had seen your brother do so for a million times at home. After a while, you found the folder where he kept his demos and you listened to a few of them.

            You were too busy bobbing your head to the beat of a particular demo that you didn’t notice Chanyeol crouched behind you until he asked, “Does it sound okay?”

            You jumped in your seat because of the sudden voice in your ear. “Fuck, you scared the shit out of me,” you told him as you turned your head around to look at him, noticing that he had his hands resting on the edge of the desk, enveloping you and the space you were sitting in.

            Heat creeped up to your chest and you weren’t sure if the alcohol was finally kicking in or if it was something else. Embarrassed, you directed your focus back to the monitor.

            “Sorry for sort of trespassing,” you apologized. “My brother also makes music so I was curious what kind of songs you were making.”

            “You’ve listened to a couple of demos. What do you think?” He asked.

            He was still dangerously close to you, so you didn’t dare to turn your head around once more. You kept looking straight at the computer screen.

            “They sound pretty good,” you admitted. “Chill RnB, my kind of music. Kind of like the songs you put on when you’re getting laid or want to get laid.”

            Chanyeol dropped his head in laughter and his face’s close proximity with your neck made your skin prickle with static. “So they sound like sex songs?” He questioned.

            “Uh, yeah,” you tried your best to sound casual. “I mean, there aren’t a lot of scenarios where you can play songs that sound sort of hot as these do.”

            “They sound hot?” Chanyeol asked and you could swear that his already low-pitched voice went even lower.

            You turned your head to see his expression: his eyebrows were furrowed, his lips were formed into a slight pout, and his eyes sparkled as he looked at the monitor.

            The heat you felt in your chest earlier was now a full-brown wildfire.

            He noticed you looking at him. “Uh...” He looked at your lips and then licked his just as the microwave in the kitchen beeped. “Food’s ready, I guess,” he said in a quiet, hoarse tone.

            But you weren’t hungry anymore.

            In a blur of teeth and tongue, the two of you were on the couch.

            You promised yourself that you wouldn’t sleep around anymore, but there you were, straddling a guy you just met a few hours ago. You hated yourself for it but you enjoyed it at the same time; you relished in the adrenaline and pleasure that you got from it.

            You promised yourself that a lot, but every time you decided that it would be the last time, you found yourself in another guy’s place over and over again until you accepted it as a pastime.

            The fact that Chanyeol was a damn good kisser wasn’t helping, either.

            _Damn_ , you thought. _The guy knows what he’s doing_.

            He rested his right hand at the small of your back to keep you in place while his other hand was on your hips, his thumb making lazy circles on your skin where your hipbone lied underneath. His legs were long enough for you to be at ease on his thighs and for him to sit comfortably with his feet planted on the ground.

            He gently tugged at your bottom lip and you bit back a moan. As your mouths continued their push and pull, you felt your phone vibrate from your back pocket; someone was calling you.

            Your lips broke away from his to see who it was, Chanyeol groaning at the lost contact. “What is it?” He asked.

            You hold up your screen to show him that Minseok was calling you.

            “Way to cockblock, Minseok,” he remarked. “Just ignore him.”

            His mouth then found its way to your neck, his lips feeling cool against your flushed skin. You tried so hard not to melt all at once.

            “I have to answer this or else he’ll be worried,” you said through short breaths.

            Chanyeol wasn’t playing around, though. He ignored you and continued working on your neck, electrifying your skin and giving you goosebumps. You answered the call and brought the phone up to your ear as he kissed you over and over, dark marks appearing where his lips have been.

            “Min, what’s up?” You struggled to keep a steady voice.

            “Did you get home safe? I’ve sent you like a hundred texts but you didn’t reply to any of them.”

            Chanyeol then started to work from your collarbone up to your jaw, making it harder and harder for you to concentrate on stabilizing your voice.

            “Yeah, I’m fine,” you said through subdued whimpers.

            “Wait, are you—”

            “Yes,” you admitted in a small voice. “Bye, Min,” you hung up, deciding that you couldn’t take anymore with Chanyeol making you dizzy with lust.

            His lips found yours the moment you ended the call, wasting no time. In one swift movement, he took your phone from your hand and put it down on the space beside him.

            You could feel him through his jeans, and the inside of your thighs couldn’t help but get warm at the thought of him enjoying this. It was evident from the sloppy kisses the two of you were exchanging that playtime was over; you both needed to let out the tension that has been building up from the moment your lips first touched.

            “Fuck,” Chanyeol said as he broke away from the kiss. “Let’s go upstairs.”

            How the two of you managed to get each other half-naked while going up the stairs, you had no idea. Lust truly made man primitive, not letting anything get in the way while in pursuit of pleasure.

            By the time you pushed him onto the bed, the two of you were breathing heavily, both of your bodies glistening with a thin sheen of sweat.

            You climbed right back on top of him after you’ve finished unbuckling his belt and pulling his pants off. Your lips reclaimed his, your bare chests against each other, and you could feel each other’s unusually fast heartbeats.

            When your mouth traveled to his neck, Chanyeol reached out to the drawer of his bedside table and grabbed a small square blue packet.

            You got off of him for a while so that he could fit into it. You inhaled sharply as you sank yourself on him, and you could see him dissolving into pleasure as he rolled his head back with his eyes tightly shut.

            You were indoors that night, but you were seeing stars.

            When all was said and done, his chest settled against your back while his hands were wrapped around you. From the way he was softly snoring into the crook of your neck, you could tell that he was fast asleep.

            You wanted to succumb to your soreness and sleep too, but you had made it your mission in life not to be the girl who stayed at a guy’s place after a one-night stand.

            The last time you let yourself get played by a guy, you swore an oath to yourself that you would never get attached to anyone ever again and look like the fragile little thing that all men stereotyped women to be. That was the reason why you always did it in his place, never yours, because you wanted to be the one to sneak out after the deed and make him wonder why you didn’t wake him up or waited for him to do so, instead of the other way around.

            As you got dressed, you looked at Chanyeol sleeping soundly. His arm was sprawled over what was your side of the bed, probably not noticing that it was now cold and empty. His ears were still red from what the two of you did a few hours ago, looking out of place in contrast to the softness of his face as he slept deeply.

            You took one last look at him before you headed out the door, wondering for the millionth time if he could finally be the last guy that you used as a scapegoat to cope with the gaping hole that has been lingering in your chest for the past six months.

 

 

**2.**

You sighed as you tapped your ID card against the scanner.

            William Avenue was peaceful for a week, but now it was back to its usual bustling self. The Monday air was filled with the sound of cars honking and feet rhythmically tapping against asphalt as people crossed the street.

            A new term started today, but you weren’t exactly feeling the “fresh start” vibe that supposedly came with it. For you, it was all a dull cycle: wake up, get ready, go to school, go home, self-loathe, and then go to sleep. Rinse and repeat. Everything just went in circles because there wasn’t anything worth looking forward to.

            You hadn’t gone out and drank for a long while, the last time being the night you met Chanyeol, Jongin, and Sehun.

            You hadn’t seen any of the three of them since that night, and you didn’t ask Minseok about them either. That was the charm of Happy Thursdays: you met and drank with people who you will most likely never see again, freeing yourself from the burden of unnecessary friendships or any other relationship.

            You hadn’t slept around since Chanyeol too, but you weren’t sure if it was because you just had too much school work the following week after that night or if you were finally getting your act together. You hoped that it was the latter.

            As you entered the room for your first class, your phone vibrated. You pulled it out from your pocket and opened the text message as you took a seat at the back row, your usual seat in a class.

 **[ Minseok / 08:46 ]  
** _Good morning! Start the term right! ;)_

 **[ You / 08:47 ]  
** _There’s nothing good about the morning._

 **[ You / 08:47 ]  
** _And who the fuck still uses the wink emoticon?_

 **[ Minseok / 08:49 ]  
** _I do. ;)_

            You snorted and put your phone on airplane mode so no one else would get the chance to bother you so early in the morning and then plugged in your earphones to listen to music before your professor arrived so that none of your new classmates would try to start small talk with you.

            You had Philosophy for first period, and after you had listened to about five songs, all the seats in the room were almost filled in. You recognized a few people from the previous classes that you took but majority of the class were comprised of people you hadn’t seen before. You guessed that they were upperclassmen.

 _It’s going to be a long term_ , you said to yourself.

            Mr. Lee entered the room clad in his signature look: white polo, red necktie, and brown coat. He dressed like what a stereotypical college professor would look like in TV and in movies, but he was actually sort of good-looking if you looked closely enough. He was pretty young too, just a little bit over five or six years older than you, but was already working to get his master’s degree.

            He had also taught the Literature class you were in a term ago, the class you were in with Chanyeol.

            “Good morning,” Mr. Lee greeted the class. “You’re two terms in your sophomore year starting today, so I think it’s completely okay to skip the pleasantries and immediately get down to business. Get your notes, laptops, or whatever out. Let’s start the lecture.”

            That was what you liked about this professor: he always went straight to the point without wasting time on needless things. You hoped that every professor was like him.

            You put away your phone and brought out your laptop.

            About fifteen minutes into the lecture, a tall guy dressed in all black—black shirt, black jeans, black bomber jacket, and black sneakers—entered the room.

            The entire class, including the professor, looked at him. You could swear your heart just missed a beat.

            “Ah, Mr. Park,” Mr. Lee said with a small smile. “It’s nice of you to join us today.”

            Chanyeol gave off a shy grin. “Sorry, Mr. Lee. Old habits die hard, I guess.”

            “Take a seat. We were just getting started on the introductory chapter,” he instructed him, and then continued on with the lecture.

            Your heart was beating wildly against your chest, and you were unsure of the reason why. Maybe it was because that you had never stayed in the same room, let alone had a class, with any of your one-night stands after the night you did them. But Chanyeol stood there ridiculously tall, like a beacon to remind you of how he was one of the many sins you had committed.

            You shifted your eyes from him to Mr. Lee’s lecture, hoping that he didn’t notice you and will never notice you for the rest of the term.

            That, of course, was impossible.

            From your peripheral view, you could see him walking towards the back of the room where you were seated.

 _Please, go away_ , you prayed as you typed in words that were coming out of your professor’s mouth. _Go sit somewhere else._

            But nothing happened like the way you wanted them to; the universe was funny like that.

            He took the empty seat beside you and brought out his laptop before dropping his backpack on the floor.

            He opened his laptop and asks, “What did I miss?” He didn’t look in your direction but you were certain that he was talking to you. He was seated beside no one else but you.

             “Uh, meaning of philosophy,” you replied without taking your eyes off of the projection screen.

            “Thanks,” he said as he began typing as well. “I haven’t seen you in a long time.”

 _You haven’t seen me since we slept with each other_ , you wanted to correct him, but you decided that it was too early in the morning to be an asshole.

            “Minseok did say I don’t wander around much.”

            “I thought he was exaggerating.”

            You didn’t reply to him after that partly because you wanted to focus on the lecture, but mostly because you weren’t used to talking to guys you had slept with before. Sure, you had seen a lot of them around campus or around William Avenue, but you hadn’t exchanged more than a couple of words with them after what happened, so having one of them as your seatmate for a class was beyond your imagination.

            Life was giving you lemons, and you wanted to squeeze them into someone’s eyes out of frustration.

            As soon as the two and a half hour class ended, you closed your laptop, put it inside your bag, and you left the room without looking behind you even once.

            You pulled out your phone from your pocket, removed it from airplane mode and texted Minseok to see what he was up to.

 **[ You / 11:34 ]**  
_I’m vacant for about three hours before my next class. You?_

            You walked around for a little while before settling on a stone bench just beside the cafeteria.

            The smell of food hit your nose, and then you realized that you were insanely hungry. You wished Minseok would reply already so that you would know if you had to wait for him before eating or not.

            You then decided to check your remaining classes for the day: after this three-hour vacant, you had three more classes with thirty-minute grace periods in between.

            You sighed. The day had just started, but you already wanted it to end.

            Just then, your phone lit up.

 **[ Minseok / 11:49 ]  
** _Sorry for replying late, History just ended. I have two hours vacant. You wanna grab something to eat?_

 **[ You / 11:50 ]  
** _YES. Where you at?_

 **[ Minseok / 11:51 ]  
**_I’m at the North Building. Let’s meet at our favorite place. I heard you have Philo with Chanyeol_.

 **[ You / 11:51 ]  
** _How the fuck did you already know?_

 **[ Minseok / 11:52 ]  
**_He just texted me_.

            “Hey,” a familiar low-pitched voice said from behind you.

            Speak of the devil.

            You sighed heavily, knowing well who it was before you even turned around to see his goofy ears and stupid smile.

            “What?” You asked, hoping that you didn’t sound rude even though you wanted to be.

            You weren’t sure what you were feeling, though. Were you annoyed, angry, or both? But what right did you have to be, when Chanyeol hasn’t done anything even remotely bad to you? Was it because you didn’t want to be in the same class with a guy you fooled around with or was it because he was completely oblivious to the unwritten rule to leave your one-night stands alone after you did what you did?

            “Are you _mad_ at me?” He questioned, furrowing his eyebrows in confusion.

            You exhaled. “Nah, I just had a terrible morning. Sorry. Why would I be mad at you?”

            “You were curt and cold in class and…” He stopped himself. “Anyway, I don’t have anything to do for the next three hours and you’re the only person I know in that class so I was wondering if you wanted to eat or something.”

            Suddenly you felt ashamed for being so rude to him. You had no idea why you were, either.

            As you and people around you had established long ago, you weren’t the friendly type. Hell, you didn’t even remember how you became friends with Minseok and the other few people you had in your incredibly small circle, but suddenly, you wanted to include Chanyeol in that circle because you felt bad for being so impolite to him today.

            Maybe you should give it a chance.

            You gave him the first smile you had since the day started. “Sure,” you said, and then you texted Minseok.

 **[ You / 11:58 ]  
**_I guess we’re having lunch with Chanyeol today_.

            Little did you know that from the moment you sent that text, Mondays would be your favorite day of the week.

 

 

**3.**

You knew that this could potentially blow up on your face but you continued to do it anyway.

            It was funny when you thought about it really—it was endemic for people to know the difference between right and wrong, but as long as doing the wrong thing filled their heart with rush and excitement, all rational thoughts immediately jumped off from their brain.

            You considered yourself to be pretty intelligent, but _man_ , what you were doing—what you had been doing for the past two months, actually—was so stupid that it made you want to punch yourself in the face if you could.

            You know you were better than this, but you couldn’t help it; you were just human, after all.

            If anything, knowing that Chanyeol was also doing it sort of calmed your nerves. It was like you found solace in the fact that you weren’t the only person on Earth that was making bad decisions; the both of you were like partners in crime.

 _More like partners in bed_ , you corrected yourself inside your head as you peeked down at the sight of Chanyeol looking like he was on a mission to eat you out until your soul left your body.

            You regretted glancing down on him the moment you did because it turned you on like a tree on Christmas and suddenly your hips had a mind of their own, grinding in sync with Chanyeol’s mouth.

            He stopped for a moment to say, “Jeez, could you, like, stay still for a sec. I’m trying to make you feel good here.”

            “I can’t stay still because you’re _making_ me feel good, you piece of—”

            But he didn’t let you finish your sentence, going down on you faster than before.

            You gripped the sheets as you felt waves of electricity surging through body, converging at your stomach, and then making their way down at your core. You were on the verge of going off, and you could tell from the smirk forming on Chanyeol’s lips as his mouth did its magic inside of you that he knew it too.

            His mouth left you, and before you could complain, his hands replaced it, strumming you like a guitar and making you sing songs you didn’t even know you could sing. Chanyeol was a musician, all right. There was absolutely no doubt about that.

            “Yeol… What the fuck,” you cursed as your head rolled back on the soft pillows of his bed, the scent of the lavender fabric softener he used filling your already-clouded senses.

            Chanyeol chuckled as his eyes stayed on you, enjoying watching you dissolve like cotton candy under his warm touch. “You look so cute when you’re about to finish and then you suddenly get mad at me for no apparent reason.”

            You were supposed to say something in retaliation to his joking, but suddenly, he hit your soft spot and all you could see was white.

            He didn’t ride out your high like you wanted him to do, but that was understandable. Both of you were just warming up, and of course you had to save the best for last.

            He pulled out his fingers from inside of you excruciatingly slow, and it naturally took a while given that his hand was literally the size of your face.

            Chanyeol licked your mess off of him. “Salty,” he noted. “Just like your attitude.”

            “Fuck off, Yeol,” you muttered as you caught your breath. You were worn out, but you couldn’t wait to get worn out even more.

            “Nah, I think I’ll just do you,” he laughed.

            You still couldn’t wrap your mind around the blinding difference between the Chanyeol you knew on the streets and the Chanyeol you knew on the sheets.

            When the two of you weren’t tangled up with each other, Chanyeol was like a big brother that you were really close with, and that was something, given that you and your real brother were as thick as thieves. When you and Chanyeol weren’t fooling around at his place, one would mistake you two as siblings from the way you playfully bickered with one another.

            Meanwhile, in bed, Chanyeol was a whole other person. The same playfulness was there, but it was more of like a teasing kind of playfulness; it was like he knew he could hit you hard and intoxicate you like a strong liquor would, and he took pride in knowing that he had that kind of power over you, that he could make you lightheaded as if you had been drinking all night.

            You had been each other’s go-to fucks for about two months now. He was the only guy you had slept with more than twice, and as far as you knew, he hadn’t been sleeping with anyone else either.

            The two of you had grown really close since you had lunch with Minseok during the start of the term and Minseok wasn’t as surprised as you expected him to be. He said that he had a feeling that you and Chanyeol would get along from the first time the two of you hung out on that Thursday night.

            You still saw Minseok around, but not as much as before. His schedule was a lot different than yours, and the person who had the most similar schedule with yours among your friends was Chanyeol. This was part of the reason why the two of you had grown fond of each other. Another reason was that you both had a three-hour vacant period after your philosophy class on Mondays, and Chanyeol lived pretty near school and… Let’s just say that the two of you spent those three hours having fun.

            Chanyeol got off the bed to get rubber from his bedside drawer. He placed the packet on top of your stomach that was still frantically rising up and down as you caught your breath to recover from what he did.

            “Please put it on me,” he asked. “I’m spent from all your squirming and groaning.”

            “Wow, sorry for tiring you so much,” you sarcastically said as you panted.

            Chanyeol lied down beside you. You sat up and climbed on him, planting soft kisses on his warm lips as you covered him up.

            After doing work on his neck and leaving not-so-subtle marks on it, you shuddered as you took him in gradually, your insides still buzzing from when you first went off.

            Chanyeol’s size wasn’t something you could get used to. How deep he went surprised you every single time you had him and you could tell from the smug smile on his lips that he knew exactly what you were thinking about right now. He was too conceited for his own good, but you didn’t dare to say anything because at the moment, he had the right to be.

            Your fingertips dug onto his skin, his broad shoulders as firm as a wall. You would know how hard he worked out because you went with him to the gym every Friday when you didn’t have classes. Whenever a guy would hit at you there, he would introduce himself as your brother and talk like the beagle he was until the creep who came up to you finally gave up and left you alone.

            You breathed heavily as your thrusts went slower and slower. Your arms felt like acid as you struggled not to combust on top of him. For the second time today, you were about to explode; one sharp move and you could shatter into a million pieces.

            Chanyeol noticed this so he took your lips between his and quickly turned you around while managing to stay inside you; you were now the one pinned down. He then began thrusting hard in and out of you.

            The familiar tingling sensation returned to your stomach and flowed down through your lower body as you felt yourself clamp down on him.

            He removed his lips from yours to utter incoherent words—probably vulgarities—before settling his mouth on the skin where your collarbones protruded.

            Your nails raked through his back as you became undone. Chanyeol followed soon after and the two of you quivered from your highs as if the temperature in his room suddenly dropped.

            He gave you a deep kiss before pulling out of you.

            You closed your eyes and tried to ease your breathing for a while before you stood up and grabbed your clothes lying on the floor. Chanyeol was sprawled on the bed, his enormous arm span taking most of the space as he stared at the ceiling, looking dazed.

            “Can I borrow your Philo notes from the previous meeting? I fell asleep during the lecture on freedom and accountability,” you asked as you buttoned your jeans.

            “Yeah, sure,” he replied, his voice strained. “I’ll e-mail them to you later.”

            You tied your hair up in a bun to save yourself from the hassle of untangling them.

            “Thanks.”

            “Why don’t you cuddle?” Chanyeol suddenly asked out of nowhere.

            “I don’t like it. It’s weird,” you lied. You wanted to, but it didn’t seem appropriate. You and Chanyeol were just sleeping around; nothing more, nothing less. “Besides, we’re not in _that_ kind of relationship,” you added. That was the truth.

            “Hmm… Fair point,” he admitted. “But why are you always rushing to leave?”

            “Uh, it’s your place so I kind of have to leave first. But today I really need to get out of here fast because it’s my mom’s birthday and my family agreed to eat dinner together.”

            “Want me to drive you?” Chanyeol offered.

            “Thanks, but I’m good,” you declined as you finished tying up your shoelaces. Besides, you didn’t want to deal with your parents questioning you if Chanyeol was your boyfriend all throughout the meal.

            Your folks have been sensitive about you dating again after the tragedy that was your previous relationship. They saw you break down more times than you liked, and ever since, they have been constantly checking if you were doing okay with school, with your friends, or just with life in general, like the caring people they were.

            You’ve been single for almost a year now, and you’ve managed to somehow convince your parents that you were done with romantic relationships and that you were fine with just yourself and your friends, and you didn’t want them to think that you were seeing someone again when they see Chanyeol.

            Suddenly, you had war flashbacks from when they thought you and Minseok were dating. You loved him so much as your best friend, but the thought of your parents assuming that the two of you were more than that was disturbing and gross. Besides, you knew who Minseok was in love with.

            You left Chanyeol’s room and went downstairs to gulp down a glass of water before you leave. His heavy footsteps were closely following you behind.

            You headed to the kitchen as Chanyeol sat in front of his work desk to continue working on this stupid song that he wouldn’t shut up about. You tried opening the file once to check his progress but he got mad and said that he didn’t want you to hear it until it was completely finished. You left his computer alone after he got mad because it felt weird seeing Chanyeol like that.

            “I’m leaving,” you announced as you placed the empty glass on the kitchen sink.

            “Okay,” Chanyeol replied absentmindedly as he stared at chord progressions on the monitor.

            You grabbed your shoulder bag from the couch near his work desk and quickly planted a kiss on his cheek before you headed out for the door.

           Chanyeol suddenly grabbed your wrist and pulled you in for a deeper kiss on the lips.

            You shook your head as he pulls away. “That was just a friendly kiss on the cheek, Yeol. You get too carried away sometimes.”

            He scoffed. “Yeah, right.”

           You rolled your eyes at him. “You’re too much sometimes, honestly,” you mumbled.

            “Hm? What was that?”

            “I said you’re an obnoxious prick,” you said as you left his unit, hearing him laugh as you closed the door behind you. You found yourself smiling as well.

            You rested your back against the door for a while, taking a deep breath to wake you up from the trance of all that happened behind that door. You started walking towards the elevators until you saw a familiar pair of shoes, making you stop dead in your tracks.

            “What the fuck were you doing in Chanyeol’s place?” He asked as you slowly looked up at him, confirming what you were thinking.

            He was also coming out from another unit, his hair messed up and his lips tinted from what suspiciously looked like smudged lipstick. The way he looked didn’t scream that he had just sex; it was just shouting into a microphone.

            The two of you stared at each other with a mix of horror and confusion painted on your faces as you both gauged the situation.

            It was your brother, Baekhyun.

 

 

**4.**

Baekhyun wouldn’t shut up about it for a solid week.

            When he found out something even mildly interesting about you, it was all he talked about for long time because he was... well, he was Baekhyun. He was probably the most talkative person on the planet.

            The last time something like this happened was when he found out that you slept with the editor-in-chief of the school paper, where he was a contributor. That lasted for about a month before he finally got tired of teasing you.

            “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me you were friends with my brother?” You angrily asked Chanyeol.

            You were having lunch with him and Minseok today, like you did whenever the three of you had the chance. Today was especially lucky since it was finals week and everyone was insanely busy.

            “I didn’t know he was your brother,” Chanyeol replied indifferently.

            You scoffed. “Bullshit. Our last names are both Byun and we look alike and you still didn’t have the faintest idea that we could be related?”

            He put down his chopsticks. “Okay. First of all, there are a shit ton of people in this country whose last name is Byun. Second, you look nothing alike.”

            Now that you thought about it, you and Baekhyun didn’t indeed share a lot of physical similarities as you thought you did.

            “Whatever,” you said, defeated.

            Chanyeol gave off a cocky smile as if to prove that he had won the argument before picking up his chopsticks and started eating again.

            Minseok finally looked up from his meal. “Why? What happened?” He asked with a mouthful.

            You mindlessly picked on your plate. “Baekhyun saw me going out of Chanyeol’s place.”

            Minseok choked.

            He literally did.

            At first, you and Chanyeol thought that he was just joking for dramatic effect, but when tears started pooling Minseok’s eyes, Chanyeol rushed to offer him some water.

Minseok coughed a few hundred times and when he finally regained his composure, he asked, “By ‘going out of Chanyeol’s place’, you mean…” He stopped, his eyes drifting back and forth between you and Chanyeol.

            Chanyeol simply nodded, smirking as he ate.

            “You guys are still doing that?” Minseok asked. “I thought it was just that one time when I called and you two were…”

            You felt uncomfortable, and judging from how Minseok backed off from the topic, he knew it too.

            You didn’t like talking about the guys you’ve been with, and it wasn’t because you were ashamed of yourself; no, you didn’t give a single fuck as to what people thought of you. Talking about them made you feel uncomfortable, even with your friends, because you weren’t a huge fan of being a kiss-and-tell type of person. You strongly believed that what happened in bed should definitely stay in bed, especially right now when the three of you were talking in a public place, meaning someone could possibly overhear.

            Minseok looked at you with an apologetic gaze. “I just think it’s dangerous, that’s all. But hey, it’s your life.” He then directed his attention back to his food.

            You thought that it was stupid too, but not _dangerous_ as Minseok had put it. You and Chanyeol were friends, and what the two of you were doing was just harmless fun, wasn’t it?

            “Why do you even care if Baekhyun knows?” Chanyeol asked. “He sleeps around too. He’s screwing my neighbor, for fuck’s sake.”

            “Baekhyun teases her a lot,” Minseok answered for you. “Is it like when Junmyeon from the school paper happened?” He asked.

            “Worse,” you responded with a tired voice. “It’s because Chanyeol and him are friends.”

            As if right on cue, a familiar obnoxious voice spoke from behind you.

            “Chanyeol! Minseok!” The voice shouted.

            You sighed as you pushed your plate away, your appetite—what was left of it, anyway—completely gone.

            “Hi, sis,” Baekhyun said as he sat beside you.

            “Can you please kindly enlighten me as to why you’re ruining my lunch?” You asked while rubbing your temples with your hands. Your head was about to overload with annoyance.

            “Chanyeol texted me.”

            You crumpled your table napkin with your fist and threw it at Chanyeol, along with a couple of profanities.

            Chanyeol found this extremely funny, which only added fuel to your blazing frustration.

            “What’s up, Baek?” Minseok asked him.

            “I was wondering…” Baekhyun began.

            “I really hope you stop wondering,” you whispered, but you said it loud enough so that your brother could hear it.

            Baekhyun ignored you and continued, “After finals week, we have about a month for holiday break and I thought it would be nice to gather the group and have a staycation at our beach house.”

            “You have a beach house?” Chanyeol asked in awe and Baekhyun nodded as if he expected everyone to know that your family had a rest house.

            You and Baekhyun didn’t show it off, so it wasn’t obvious that the two of you came from a pretty well-off background. Your parents have various businesses all over the country and have wanted you and Baekhyun to major in business, but both of you didn’t want to. You were passionate with writing as Baekhyun was with music, and the two of you didn’t want to walk the same path as your folks just for the sake of doing it. Baekhyun was like you: he knew what he wanted and because of that, he didn’t let other people make decisions for him. It was one of the few things you liked about your brother.

            “Wow, I didn’t know you were rich,” Chanyeol said.

            “That’s how the rich _stay_ rich,” you retaliated.

            Chanyeol was about to reply, probably with some witty comeback, but Minseok suddenly asked, “Who’s coming? The usual?”

            By _the usual_ , Minseok meant him, Baekhyun, Jongdae, Yixing, and you. Jongdae and Yixing were Baekhyun’s high school friends that you had also grown close with, given that they were always hanging around at home. Eventually, them and Minseok became friends too after you introduced them to each other.

            “Chanyeol, do you want to come with?” Baekhyun asked him.

            “Yeah, sure,” Chanyeol shrugged. “I don’t have anything to do during the holiday break anyway.”

            “Can I bring a couple of friends?” Minseok asked. “She and Chanyeol know them too.” You guessed he was pertaining to Jongin and Sehun.

            “Sure,” Baekhyun replied and then turned to you. “Sis, can I invite Junmyeon too?” He joked.

            “How about you go fuck yourself?”

            The table erupted in laughter, and you couldn’t help but join in too.

* * *

            Everyone was tired from the long drive, so when you brought out the booze, the living room of the villa was filled with cheers.

            The beach house that your family owned was about four hours away from city, and you were glad that you decided to ride in Chanyeol’s car as you heard Yixing complaining about Baekhyun and Jongdae’s nonstop whining and talking for the duration of the drive.

            Sehun and Chanyeol sat quietly on the couch, probably dead tired as they were the ones who brought cars and drove for the group like Yixing did.

            Minseok was helping you distribute the beer to the guys when he suddenly asked, “Is Ji-eun coming?”

            “No,” you said. “I asked her, but she declined. I’m relieved, actually. I didn’t want Baekhyun hitting on her.”

            “Oh.”

            You gave Minseok a small smile. “Hey, don’t worry. It’s all good. She’s not mad at you anymore. We’re all friends, right?”

            Minseok simply nodded as he continued to hand bottles of beer to the rest of the guys.

            Ji-eun was a mutual friend of you and Minseok. You still talked to her a lot, but you didn’t see her as much as before because she transferred universities due to a scholarship offer. More than that, she was also Minseok’s ex-girlfriend, and things between the three of you started going south when they broke up. You didn’t know the reason why they split, and you didn’t ask because you didn’t like prying into other people’s personal matters unless they confided in you first. All you knew was that Minseok did something bad and that Ji-eun had forgiven him when he apologized, and that was about it.

            As expected, Jongin and Sehun were the first to get tipsy. They were still a little awkward around you since you only hung out with them once before, but the alcohol soon did its magic and in no time, the awkwardness in the group disappeared as the night got deeper.

            Jongin finished another beer and set the empty bottle on the glass coffee table. “Is it okay with you to hang around with guys like this?” He asked you. “I mean, don’t you feel a little uneasy since you’re the only girl here?”

            Jongin’s question would have rubbed other people the wrong way, but you weren’t offended. You were an expert in reading people so you understood that his question was more than innocent.

            “I’m a little picky with my friends but when I do have friends, I like having honest people with me,” you said. “It doesn’t matter if they’re a guy or a girl, as long as they’re real to me and they’re good people. It’s just a coincidence that most of my friends are guys.”

            “Damn, you’re cool,” Jongin said.

            “She is, isn’t she?” Baekhyun butted in. “I don’t even feel like I have a sister sometimes. She’s more like a brother.”

            Baekhyun put his right arm around your shoulder and ruffled your hair with the other. You reprimanded him for being touchy and gross, but in reality, your heart warmed at what he said; it was probably the first time Baekhyun had said anything like that. You thought that he just enjoyed making fun of you as you were younger than him, but you had no idea that he was that fond of you. You made a mental note to get him something nice for his birthday.

            Soon, almost everyone was woozy. Even the heavy drinkers—Chanyeol, Jongdae, Minseok, and you—spoke in slurred tones, so naturally, the conversation drifted to something heftier.

            Chanyeol mentioned how Baekhyun was fooling around with his neighbor and all of you laughed at the bickering between the two beagles.

            You were glad that neither Baekhyun nor Minseok mentioned the minor detail that you caught Baekhyun sneaking out of that condo unit because you had slept with Chanyeol. It was nice of them to keep quiet about it, and it surprised you that Baekhyun did. Maybe he did know more about how you felt than what you had originally thought of him.

            “How about we play a game?” Yixing suggested.

            Sehun, who had been relatively quiet all night, suddenly leaned forward. “What game?”

            Yixing smiled. “Never Have I Ever.”

            You sighed because you knew this game all too well. It was the ultimate bait for crazy stories whenever friends went out and drank.

            “How are we going to play it?” Chanyeol asked.

            “Each of us holds up five fingers, and we take turns in saying things that we’ve never done. When you’ve done what the person speaking hadn’t, you put down one of your fingers and take a shot of vodka. No ice, no chasers. Straight and hot,” Yixing explained.

            “So you want everyone to die tonight?” Baekhyun sarcastically asked, earning laughter from the group.

            “It’s fun,” you said. “I’ve played this game before. I say when someone loses all five fingers, they have to drink three additional shots.”

            The living room was silent for a few seconds, everyone nodding in agreement.

            “Okay. I’ll start,” Yixing said. “Never have I ever gotten laid if I wasn’t in a relationship.”

            Baekhyun, Chanyeol, Jongin, Minseok, and you took a shot.

            The vodka burned in your throat, but it was a sensation that you liked. Baekhyun made gagging sounds after he drank, and you wondered to yourself why he liked drinking so much even though he was a lousy drinker.

            Sehun was next. “Never have I ever had a one-night stand.”

            Everyone took a shot except for Jongdae, Sehun, and Yixing.

            “Never have I ever slept with a person who I wasn’t in a relationship with more than once,” Minseok said.

            Baekhyun, Chanyeol, and you were the only ones who drank.

            “Okay, hold the fuck up,” Baekhyun complained. “The three of us have two fingers left,” pointing at you, Chanyeol and him, “and all the questions have been about sex. Isn’t this unfair?”

            “It’s not our fault that the three of you go around too much,” Minseok laughed.

            “Fine,” Baekhyun sighed. “It’s my turn, you fuckers. Never have I ever slept with a person who I wasn’t in a relationship with more than twice!” He shouted, as if he had outsmarted everyone in the room.

            “Hey, you just copied me—” Minseok was about to complain, but suddenly everyone went quiet when you and Chanyeol silently took a shot.

            Everyone looked at the two of you.

            You broke the silence when you said, “My turn,” your voice husky from consecutively drinking four shots of pure vodka. “Never have I ever had feelings for anyone I fooled around with.”

            Chanyeol drank another four shots, one for losing a finger and the other three were penalties for losing all five. He was the only one who drank.

            From the way the room was silent, you could have heard a pin drop.

            “Wow, Chanyeol is something else,” Baekhyun cut through the quietness, voicing out what you were thinking.

            Chanyeol sheepishly smiled before finishing a tall glass of water in a matter of seconds.

* * *

            You had no idea why you were standing in front of Chanyeol’s door.

            The villa was dead quiet, everyone probably fast asleep. You could feel it in your bones that you were drunk, but you shrugged it off, thinking that you wouldn’t have been able to walk from your room to Chanyeol’s if you were far too gone.

            You knocked, but when he didn’t answer, you opened the door, which, to your surprise, wasn’t locked.

            The lights were on and Chanyeol was sitting on the bed with his back against the headboard. He was playing a song on his guitar, which was probably the reason why he didn’t hear you knocking.

            When he finally saw you walking into his room, he immediately got off the bed and walked towards you.

            “Why? What’s wrong?” He asked.

            You shook your head. “Nothing. I was just… bored,” you said as you cupped his face with your hands and pulled him in for a kiss.

            Chanyeol put his hand on your hips as you led him to the bed. You were about to take your shirt off when he stopped you.

            “Let’s not do this tonight,” he said quietly, his eyes burning through yours.

            “Why not?”

            “You’re drunk.” Chanyeol gently took your hands off of his face. “I don’t want to take advantage of the situation. I’m many things, but I’m not an asshole.”

            Your mind went blank. You sat there speechless as you blinked your eyes at him, surprised that you heard those words come out of a guy’s mouth.

            “Why do you look so surprised?” Chanyeol smiled. “Am I the first guy who said that to you?”

            You nodded.

            “Well, they’re assholes. Don’t have sex with guys like that,” he said as he sat back to the position he was in before you came to his room. “But you can sleep here if you want. I’ll sing you to sleep.”

            He began strumming his guitar once again as you settled yourself on the bed, pulling the covers over your body.

            “Hey, can I ask you something?” You asked him in a small voice. You could feel yourself drifting away because of the alcohol.

            “Sure,” Chanyeol said while looking at you, his hands not stopping at playing as if they had a mind of their own.

            “At the game… you drank when I said that never have I ever caught feelings with someone I was sleeping with. So, you’ve had feelings for someone you were fooling around with? Who?”

            Suddenly he was playing another song, a song that you could recognize no matter what instrument it was played on.

            “Just some girl,” Chanyeol replied.

            “Don’t do that with me, Yeol,” you said. “Promise me.”

            “Don’t do what?”

            Your eyes felt heavy with sleep as you sink further and further. “Don’t fall for me.”

            Chanyeol simply nodded. He began singing to accompany the melody he was playing with his guitar.

 “ _When you were here before,_  
_Couldn’t look you in the eye_  
_You’re just like an angel,_  
_Your skin makes me cry_ …”

            His sweet voice filled the room and you could feel your eyes getting heavier.

            Chanyeol had an amazing voice. You figured that he could sing well since he’s majoring in music production, but you didn’t expect him to be _that_ good. You could listen to him sing forever, and it was a bonus that he was singing your favorite song.

“ _You float like a feather_  
_In a beautiful word_  
_I wish I was special,_  
_You’re so fucking special_ …”

            You fell asleep to Chanyeol serenading you, and it was the best sleep you’ve had in recent memory.

 

 

**5.**

You were in the middle of getting dolled up when someone suddenly knocked on your hotel room door.

            Soo-hyun, your makeup artist, stopped blending in your eyeshadow and asked, “Were you expecting room service, Miss Byun?”

            “No, I’m not,” you responded. “Maybe it’s my parents or my brother.”

            She set down the brush she was holding onto the table, went toward the door, and checked who it was through the peephole. “I think it’s your boyfriend.”

            “He’s not my boyfriend,” you sighed. “Let him in. I’ll see what he wants.”

            Soo-hyun opened the door and a different-looking Chanyeol stepped into the room.

            You already knew that Chanyeol was kind of attractive, but you had no idea that he could look even better. He was wearing a classic black and white tuxedo. It complemented his broad and long frame, as if he was born to wear formal attire. His hair, which usually settled on his forehead, was combed up, further accentuating his handsome face.

            You always saw him in jeans and sweatshirts, but this is the first time you saw him looked so formal and… handsome. There, you said it. He looked breathtaking.

            “I look hot, don’t I?” He asked with a stupid smirk on his face. Maybe it was a little obvious from your expression that you thought he was stunning.

            “You’re always _so_ humble.” You rolled your eyes at him. “Why are you here? What do you want?”

            “Oh, right. I needed to give you—” he began to say, but his sentence was cut off when the telephone on the bedside table suddenly rang.

            You stood up from where you were sitting to answer the call.

            “Hello?” You said into the receiver. “Okay. I’m just finishing up. Okay. Bye.”

            It was your dad. He told you that the ball would be starting soon, so you needed to hurry up with getting ready.

            It was two days before Christmas, and for as long as you can remember, it has been your parents’ tradition to hold a ball for their company. A lot of people came to these affairs, mostly your parents’ business partners and their families.

            You and Baekhyun hated it. Obviously, the two of you were going to inherit your parents’ businesses, so you were expected to mingle with the people that you parents did business with. You disliked forced interaction but you disliked faking your enthusiasm with it even more. The only thing you liked about it was that it was the only time of the year when you could see your other relatives.

            For the past three years, you attended these balls with your ex-boyfriend. Of course, you didn’t have a boyfriend now, so you asked Minseok if he wanted to go with you but unfortunately, he went out of the country with his family for the holidays.

            You told Baekhyun that you didn’t want to suddenly show up without a date at the ball when you already went with one for three consecutive years. It didn’t matter to you, since Baekhyun always showed up alone in these things, but you didn’t want people asking what happened between you and your ex-boyfriend.

            So, in true Baekhyun fashion, he suggested that you asked Chanyeol.

            You immediately said no because you thought it would be weird to suddenly ask so much of him when you didn’t even know him that long. Baekhyun then said that he already told Chanyeol about it and that Chanyeol agreed because apparently, he wasn’t kidding when he said that he didn’t have anything to do during the holiday break.

            That was how Chanyeol ended up in your hotel room.

            You sat back in front of the vanity table and called on Soo-hyun to continue doing your makeup.

            “Just give it to me later,” you said to Chanyeol. “Whatever it is you needed to give me, I mean. The ball’s starting soon and I still need to finish my makeup so leave me alone. Go find Baekhyun and annoy him.”

            “Fine,” Chanyeol sighed. “I’ll see you later.” He gave your shoulders a squeeze before leaving the room.

            When Soo-hyun was sure that Chanyeol was out of earshot, she asked, “Are you sure he’s not your boyfriend, Miss Byun? He’s handsome. The two of you look good together.”

            You wanted to gag at her comment, but your heart was inexplicably beating fast contrary to what you wanted to feel and it was frustrating you. You could sense your cheeks warming up and you hoped that Soo-hyun hadn’t noticed it.

            You and Chanyeol looked good together?

            “We’re just really good friends,” you explained, your mouth lingering at the last word.

            The two of you were friends, weren’t you?

            “I’m just saying,” Soo-hyun shrugged with a mischievous smile on her lips.

            After you finished getting ready, you immediately headed down to the grand ball room.

            When the elevators opened, Chanyeol standing with his hands in his pockets was the first thing you saw, as if he was waiting for you.

            He looked at you and his eyes traveled from your face, down to your feet, and then settled on your face again as if he was seeing you for the first time.

            You were wearing a tight red dress that stopped just a little bit above your knees. It emphasized your already prominent hips, and you saw that Chanyeol’s eyes lingered on that part of you longer than necessary. You were also wearing stilettos, but you were still significantly shorter than Chanyeol when you stood right next to him.

            “I look hot, don’t I?” You teased him. “Pick up your jaw from the floor, Yeol.”

            He cleared his throat. “You’re always _so_ humble,” he repeated what you had said to him earlier in the exact same way that you did.

            Chanyeol held out his arm for you to hold, and you took it. The two of you entered the ball room linked together.

            Your parents and Baekhyun were already talking to some people when they saw you enter.

            Baekhyun was grinning like a mad man. “Wow, you’re looking good, sis.”

            You didn’t answer and just gave him the sweetest smile you could force yourself to do because you didn’t want to say something horrible to him with your parents and their business partners around.

            “Your daughter has grown into a fine woman, Mr. Byun,” an older woman whose name you didn’t know said to your father.

            “She got her looks from me,” your dad joked.

            You smiled at the lady. “Thank you, ma’am.”

            The woman looked at Chanyeol. “Oh, who’s this handsome young man?”

            “He’s my good friend,” you replied. You felt Chanyeol’s muscles tense at your last word.

            “I see. What happened to the young man you went with last year? What was his name? Did something happen between the two of you?”

            Your smile disappeared. This lady was probably one of your parents’ business partners, but she absolutely had no right to pry on your personal life like that.

            Your parents looked at each other and then exchanged a look with Baekhyun, a silent understanding passing between the three of them.

            Baekhyun smiled and said, “Uh, sorry. Can I excuse my sister and her date for a second? I need to discuss something with them.”

            Before the rude lady could even respond to him, your parents were already starting another conversation about shares with her.

            When the three of you were far enough, Baekhyun let out a deep breath. “Jesus Christ, Mrs. Kim is so fucking annoying.” He looked at you. “Are you okay?”

            “Yeah, I’m fine,” you assured him. “Let’s just go get drinks and not talk to anyone for the rest of the night.”

            And so you did.

            Baekhyun, Chanyeol, and you sat together drinking champagne while exchanging funny stories.

            Your parents didn’t approach you to meet anyone anymore, probably because of the way you reacted with Mrs. Kim. It was the first time that you blatantly showed your distaste while talking to the other businesspeople that your parents knew, and it was because you saw no correlation between your past relationships with business.

            It was a sensitive topic for you and your parents knew it. They saw firsthand how your previous relationship broke you, so it was natural that they would try their best for you to not talk about it, especially with people who weren’t friends or family.

            It still hurt when you thought about what happened, but at times like this when you were laughing with Baekhyun and Chanyeol, it hurt a little less.

            You were resting your head on Chanyeol’s shoulder when the live band announced that the dance floor was open and started playing slow songs.

            Baekhyun’s face turned sour. “I’m having war flashbacks from prom,” he said before finishing another glass of champagne.

            “You were the fucking prom king,” you reminded him. “How could you have possibly hated that night?”

            “You have no idea,” Baekhyun mumbled.

            You suddenly felt Chanyeol’s hand rest on yours and you looked up at him.

            He asked you, “Do you want to dance?”

            “I thought you hated dancing.”

            “I would for you,” he laughed.

            He stood up and led you to the dance floor. Baekhyun was cheering from the table.

            You and Chanyeol took to the middle, surrounded by a few other couples who looked so happy in each other’s arms.

            Chanyeol put his right hand at the small of your back while the other took yours in its grasp. You placed your left hand on his shoulder, and he started leading your feet to the music and you followed without even thinking about it.

            You felt dizzy, but it wasn’t because of the champagne in your body. It was because you and Chanyeol were so close to each other that it made your limbs weak and set your heart on fire.

            The intimacy shouldn’t have bothered you because the two of you had gone closer than this, but it did anyway.

            “You’re getting better at dancing,” you said just for the sake of talking about something. You had to calm your nerves.

            He chuckled. “Actually, I asked Jongin to help me with this.”

            You couldn’t help but laugh too. The image of Chanyeol and Jongin doing this was so ridiculous that it helped you forget your nervousness.

            “You really thought this through, huh?”

            “I _may_ have overthought it a little,” he smiled. He then cleared his throat. “Uh… You look beautiful tonight,” he shyly said.

            “Thanks, Yeol,” you said. You hoped your cheeks weren’t as red as you felt they were. “You don’t look so bad yourself.”

            “I think this is the first time you’ve ever said anything nice to me,” he laughed.

            It became quiet after that, but it was a comfortable silence. The two of you looked at each other until the song ended and the uneasiness in your chest was completely gone.

            Baekhyun was smiling when you and Chanyeol got back to the table. It wasn’t one of his teasing smiles; it was a genuine one, like he was so happy to see the two of you dance together. It had been a while since you saw Baekhyun smile like that.

            He pursed his lips to stop himself from grinning. “I want to say something, but I won’t.”

            Never in your life did you expect to hear those words come out of your brother’s mouth.

* * *

            The ball had ended, and you just finished washing up. Your feet ached from wearing high heels all night long, and all you wanted to do was lie on your bed until all the pain went away.

            Your mind couldn’t help but replay the dance you and Chanyeol shared just a few hours ago. You could still feel the phantom of his hand lingering on your back, warming your chest once more.

            You didn’t want to think about Chanyeol like that because you knew that it should never happen. It could, but it shouldn’t. You were fine with the friendship the two of you had now, and you didn’t want to risk losing all of it because of some stupid butterflies in your stomach.

            You were about to sleep when your phone suddenly beeps, indicating that you just received a text message.

 **[ Chanyeol / 00:02 ]  
** _Open your door._

            You stood up and walked towards the door. The pain on your heels made you feel like you were stepping on needles and when you opened the door for Chanyeol, you were wincing.

            He had his hands behind his back. His huge smile suddenly turned into a worried expression. “Why? What’s wrong? Are you hurt?”

          “Nah,” you dismissively said. “My just are just aching from the shoes I wore earlier.”

            “Can I come in?”

            Instead of answering, you opened the door wider and headed straight back to your bed because you couldn’t stand walking around any longer. You heard the door close just as you pull the sheets over you.

            “I was about to sleep,” you yawned. “What are you doing here? Aren’t you sleeping in Baek’s room?”

            He snorted. “As if I could sleep in there with him snoring so loudly.” He then placed a small black box wrapped with a silver ribbon beside you. “Since I couldn’t sleep even if I wanted to, I thought that I’d just give you this.”

            You sat up. “Is this a Christmas gift?” You asked as you gingerly take the box.

            “Uh, obviously.”

            You unraveled the ribbon around the box and you opened it.

            You wanted to cry.

            It was a silver chain bracelet with a heart clasp studded with clear stones. It was so simple yet so beautiful, and what added to its beauty was that Chanyeol had picked it out for you.

            You hugged him tightly.

            “You know, you don’t suck sometimes,” you joked even though you could feel your eyes filling up with tears. “Which reminds me, I bought something for you too.”

            You quickly got off the bed and wiped away your tears so that Chanyeol wouldn’t notice that you were crying. You rummaged through the cabinet where you kept the stuff that you had brought with you to the hotel until you found the box that you were looking for.

            You just bought this today and you were supposed to save it for Christmas itself, but now felt like the perfect time to give it to him.

            “You’re not the only who doesn’t suck, you know,” you said as you hand him a small paper bag.

            Chanyeol made quick work of the packaging, and in no time, he was staring at the gold watch that you had bought for him.

            “I just thought that you needed some color, you know? You wore black from head to toe and even the watch you had was black and I thought that it would be nice if you had a little bit of gold—”

            Your rambling was cut short when Chanyeol took you in his arms.

            His chest felt firm against yours and you couldn’t help but feel safe as his strong yet gentle arms wrapped you in a warm hug.

            “It feels nice to have a rich friend,” he joked. You broke away from the hug and smacked his arm.

            Your eyes were still taking in the image of his beautiful smile when he took your face in his hands and kissed you.

 

 

**6.**

“Would you please stop smoking?” Chanyeol said.

            You couldn’t help it. The amount of school work you had this week was unforgiving; it seemed like every professor you had decided to drop heavy requirements just a week after holiday break. You were so overwhelmed with the workload that you could literally feel your brain and your body tapping out from exhaustion. You needed an outlet, and a pack of cigarettes had always helped you regain your focus.

            “I’m sorry,” you apologized to Chanyeol. You put out the stick on the already-full ashtray. “I’m just so stressed out. I mean, aren’t you? You’re a junior.”

            If you were on the verge of breaking down, you couldn’t imagine how Chanyeol was feeling. He was on his third year, and it was the year when he was also taking up his most of his major subjects. You would know, as you would come home to Baekhyun working on his music studio, and when you left for school in the morning, he was still there. You wondered if it was like that for Chanyeol too.

            “I am,” Chanyeol admitted. “But there’s no point in complaining about it.”

            He was focused on his laptop, furiously typing. His eyebrows were furrowed in concentration and he didn’t look up once while talking.

            You were partners for a synthesis paper on your Philosophy class. The two of you had agreed to equally split the labor in writing it. You were finished in writing the first half of the paper, and Chanyeol was currently working on the other half.

            You were working in a coffee shop just a few blocks away from the building where Chanyeol lived, and you’ve been here for more than four hours. Your table was filled with six coffee cups; you and Chanyeol have had three cups each.

            Even though you were done with most of your requirements, you still felt anxious. Every time you were nervous when there was nothing to be tense about, something bad happened. It was like your body was telling you to prepare yourself for something.

            You hoped that it meant nothing. In order to distract yourself from it, you decided to work on the thousand-word speech you needed to write for your Politics and Governance class.

            You finished the speech in just an hour, and by the time you were saving your work, Chanyeol was also done with his.

            “I fucking hate philosophy,” he exhaled as he stretched his body to relax it from sitting and typing for the past few hours.

            “Where do you want to eat?” You asked him. “All we’ve had for today is coffee.”

            It was around 8 p.m., but you and Chanyeol haven’t had eat dinner yet.

            “Let’s just grab something to-go and then eat at my place,” he said as he shut off his laptop and shoved it inside his backpack. “I have a shit ton of rendering and arranging to do.”

            You agreed as you understood how incredibly busy he was. You were on your last term of sophomore year, and seeing Chanyeol look so tired from his majors was like having a glimpse of what was coming to you next term when you enter your third year of college.

            The two of you decided on having pizza and buffalo wings. When you left the restaurant, you ran into someone you never dreamt of running into.

            Your instincts never failed you.

            You knew that something bad was bound to happen the moment you felt your heart getting anxious for no reason. This was what your body was preparing you for.

            Kyungsoo stood there, looking at you and Chanyeol. He had a girl with him, and they were holding hands. You knew who she was; you knew all too well. It was Ji-hyun, the girl he had broken up with you for.

            Your body felt numb.

            You instinctively grabbed onto Chanyeol’s arm. Your stomach was tied up in knots and your heart felt like it was being kneaded like dough. You felt dizzy with a haphazard of emotions: hatred, disgust, pain. You needed to hold onto something. You needed something to anchor you so that you wouldn’t fall over yourself again.

            You took a deep breath to suppress everything you were feeling. You didn’t want to give Kyungsoo the satisfaction of seeing that you were still a mess a year after the two of you broke up.

            Chanyeol immediately understood the situation. He gently put his arm over your shoulder and steered you away.

            “I just wanted to say that I’m sorry,” Kyungsoo spoke up as you and Chanyeol passed by.

            You stopped.

            You turned to look at him, your eyes were dead and void of any emotion.

            “I don’t need your apology, Soo.”

* * *

            The food that you bought was left untouched on Chanyeol’s countertop.

            You were sitting on his couch with your arms hugging your knees. Chanyeol sat beside you, running his hands through your hair. It was eerily quiet as the two of you didn’t say anything.

            You didn’t cry. Every emotion that you felt when you saw Kyungsoo has left your body. You just felt empty.

            After sitting in silence for a few more minutes, you finally said something.

            “Let’s eat,” you said as you stood up from the couch. “I know that you’re hungry and you have a lot of work to do so let’s just—”

            “Don’t,” Chanyeol whispered. He took your hand and led you back to the couch. “Don’t brush it off like you always do. We can talk about it if you want to.”

            So you told him everything.

            You met Kyungsoo on your sophomore year in high school. You started out as best friends, and it eventually turned into something more. It wasn’t always perfect between the two of you, as expected of every relationship, but you looked past those imperfections and strived to make the relationship a healthy one. Your family, friends, and even your teachers all rooted for the two of you, thinking that you would be each other’s endgame.

            Obviously, it didn’t work out.

            When you graduated high school and started university, you didn’t see Kyungsoo as often as you liked. You were used to seeing and being with each other every day that adjusting to the new situation took a lot of work; sometimes you didn’t even see each other for a month or two.

            It was in the middle of that adjustment that things started going wayward between the two of you. You would fight over the smallest things. He wouldn’t answer his phone when you called. Whenever the two of you wanted to see each other, either one of you was busy with school. Months passed like that and it was frustrating. You braced yourself for the ultimatum, but when it came, nothing prepared you for it.

            The night before your thirty-third month together, you had the biggest fight you’ve ever had since being together. You couldn’t remember what was it about, actually, because when the two of you talked on the phone that night, all the frustration that built up from the past few months started pouring out from both you. You were so tired of everything. You would’ve given up if you didn’t love him.

            However, Kyungsoo didn’t feel the same way.

            The following day, the two of you decided to finally meet up after almost a month of not seeing each other. It was when Kyungsoo decided to end things once and for all.

            He had told you that he couldn’t do it anymore; he couldn’t play the part of being your boyfriend any longer. He said that he felt like such a failure because he could no longer make you happy and that you probably needed someone else to provide that for you.

            Kyungsoo cried while telling you all of that, and he rarely showed that side of him so you didn’t question his emotions. You accepted it since everything was already beyond repair. The two of you agreed to remain friends because you shared almost three years of your life with each other; you couldn’t just simply throw him or those memories away.

            Months after that, you found out from your friends that Kyungsoo had been cheating on you with Ji-hyun since college started.

            The breakup broke your heart, but hearing that Kyungsoo had cheated on you ripped it into pieces and set it on fire.

            You couldn’t explain how infuriated you were because just when you thought that the two of you had broken it off cleanly, you found out that he had been playing you for the fool all the while you were wallowing in the pain of not being enough for him.

            That was when you realized that being friends with your ex-boyfriend was complete and utter bullshit.

            From then on, you were done with boyfriends and relationships. You decided that everything that you will ever need is yourself because in that way, no one can have the power of breaking you.

            After you finished telling Chanyeol everything, you were surprised that you didn’t cry even once.

            He looked at you with solemn eyes, as if he understood you for the first time since you’ve met.

            That breakup was the reason why you fooled around in the first place. You craved the intimacy, not the commitment. No one took relationships seriously anymore, so why should you get into one? You were fed up. You were done. You wanted a guy between your legs without giving him the privilege of getting into your heart. It was easier that way.

            You lied down on the couch and rested your head on Chanyeol’s lap.

            “I’m so tired of everything,” you said.

            Chanyeol tucked a stray strand of hair behind your ear. “I’m sorry you had to go through something like that.”

            “Me too, Yeol. Me too.”

            “Do you still love him, though?” He asked you softly.

            You didn’t even think twice before answering. “No, I don’t. He can go and fuck himself. I’m just… I’m just hurt and disappointed in him. I know that he’s a good person, that’s why I didn’t expect him to do something like that.”

            “I get it now.”

            You didn’t know what he meant by that, but you were too tired to ask him about it. You just wanted to rest. You wanted to take a break from everything—from school, from life, from yourself. You needed to step back for a while in order to keep going forward.

            Chanyeol hummed a song as you feel asleep, the darkness welcoming you after a very long day.

* * *

            When you woke up, you were on Chanyeol’s bed. He must have carried you up here last night.

            It was pouring outside; the skyline of the city that was usually seen from Chanyeol’s window was enveloped in gray clouds.

            It was Friday and you didn’t have classes, so you didn’t have to worry about finding your way to school under the downpour.

            You fixed yourself up in the bathroom before going down to see Chanyeol.

            He was setting up the dining table while the food that you had bought last night was heating in the microwave.

            “Good morning,” Chanyeol greeted you with a bright smile as if last night never happened. “I didn’t want you to be uncomfortable on so I carried you to the bed.”

            “Where did you sleep?”

            “I didn’t,” he replied. The microwave beeped, and he went toward it to take out the food. “I had a lot of stuff to do, remember?”

            That was when you noticed the dark circles under his eyes. Even though he smiled so widely, it was evident on his face that he was tired.

            You felt embarrassed about making last night all about you.

            As he was plating the food on the countertop, you hugged him from behind.

            “I’m sorry,” you apologized against his back.

            Chanyeol stopped what he was doing and turned around to face you. You placed your hands on his shoulders while his rested on your hips. “What for?”

            “You had to pull an all-nighter for your school works because I ruined last night for you. You didn’t get to sleep.”

            He laughed. “I always lose sleep because of you, so it doesn’t really matter.”

            Your heart jumped in your chest but you tried your best to ignore it. “I’m serious, Yeol. Get some rest after breakfast, okay? We’re not going to the gym today. You need to sleep.”

            You pulled away and started walking towards the dining table when Chanyeol pulled you back in and kissed you deeply.

            It wasn’t like the kisses you’ve exchanged before that was born out of want and lust. This kiss was born out of need and you could feel it in your heart.

            Chanyeol grabbed your hips and pulled you up the countertop so that you were now sitting on it. His hands remained on your hips as your mouths continued consuming each other like they needed one another to survive.

            You broke away from the kiss and Chanyeol moved his lips to your neck as if he needed them on your body at all times.

            “Yeol,” you moaned as he hit the soft spot where your neck and shoulder met. “You need to rest, remember?”

            “You are rest,” he said against your skin before touching his mouth to it once more.

            You didn’t know what he had meant by that. Chanyeol kept on saying things that didn’t make sense to you, but it still made your heart flutter.

            Eventually the two of you found your way to his bedroom.

            You’ve been in bed with him more times than you can count, you were absolutely sure that there was something different about right now.

            You weren’t sure if you were just imagining it, but every kiss and every touch held more meaning than all of the previous ones combined.

            Sure, all the other times felt good, but this one warmed you up inside and stayed there. It wasn’t rough, but it was definitely intense. All the previous sex was hot, but this one was scorching.

            Chanyeol dug inside you and even though you haven’t eaten since last night, you never felt so full in your life. He rode you painstakingly slow and deep like he was savoring every moment of it.

            His lips never left yours.

            You moaned against his mouth as you gradually feel yourself shutting tight around him. You were so close.

            “Shit,” he said after pulling away from the kiss. “I _hate_ it when you do that. I feel like I’m going crazy.”

            “Jesus Christ, Yeol. I can’t help it when you’re grinding in me like that—”

            You were cut off when he suddenly picked up his pace and started thrusting harder. All that can be heard in the room was both of your moans and skin slapping against skin.

            You arched your back as you felt your release pouring out of your core. Chanyeol didn’t stop. He kept his rhythm while you were still having aftershocks and your entire lower body felt numb with pleasure. His thrusts were only slowed down when he was coming undone.

            He pulled out from inside you and rested his body beside you.

            You were both panting crazily. You didn’t know if he felt the same way, but there was something definitely different from the way the two of you just had each other.

            He turned to his side to look at you and pulled you into an embrace.

            “I’m tired,” he whispered against your hair.

            You kissed him softly. “Sleep.”

            In no time, he was snoring lightly.

            You stared at him as he slept. He looked beautiful when his features softened into a peaceful look. You gently traced his face with your fingertips and you found yourself falling into a pit that you promised yourself you wouldn’t.

            You loved the mole on his nose. You loved how big his ears were and you loved how they didn’t make him look funny, they only made him look more charming. You loved how his lower teeth showed when he smiled widely. You loved the dimple that appeared on his left cheek.

            You loved him.

            But you didn’t deserve to.

 

 

**7.**

The tension in the air was thick. You could feel it weighing down on your body, like an invisible force pinning you in your seat.

            You were riding shotgun in Chanyeol’s car, on the way to his place. He kept his eyes on the road, his hands on the steering wheel, and his mouth shut. He hasn’t said a word since you left school together.

            Something bad must have happened.

            Chanyeol was rarely this quiet, even at times when his mood was not the best. He would always find a way to talk about something, anything, even if he didn’t want to. He wasn’t one to ruin the mood—he usually _creates_ the mood, but there he was, his lips pressed into a thin line, his usually bright face covered in a frown. He was taking deep breaths through his nose as if he was preventing himself from combusting.

            You haven’t seen him this angry.

            As you arrived in his unit, the atmosphere sort of cooled down. He still hadn’t said a word, but he looked more composed than he did while driving.

            “Which topic do you want to work on for our second synthesis paper?” You cautiously asked, careful not to raise your tone. The brightest people were usually the ones who were the most scary when they were angry, and you didn’t want to push Chanyeol to the edge even if you weren’t sure what he was mad about.

            About a week ago, Mr. Lee, your philosophy professor, grouped the class into pairs to work on a synthesis paper. He assigned another write up for this week, so you and Chanyeol had to work together again. You mutually agreed to do the paper at his place.

            Seeing Chanyeol like this, however, made you want to run straight for the door.

            “How about writing a paper on knowing the truth and respect for persons?” He suggested. His tone was heavy with sarcasm.

            You know what he was mad about.

            Your lips were trembling. Your eyes stung, threatening to spill tears. Your hands began fidgeting on the hem of your sweater. A cold wave washed through your entire body.

            How did he know?

            “Yeol.”

            Chanyeol looked at you. His eyes were red like he was about to cry. His fists were balled up at his sides. He was mad, all right. He was mad at _you_.

            “You really didn’t expect Sehun to keep quiet about it, did you?”

            You wanted the ground to open up and swallow you whole. You wanted to magically disappear into thin air. You wanted to melt into your clothes instead of having to face the big fat mess in front of you. You wanted to leave.

            But you saw this coming.

            You knew this would happen the moment you let Sehun kiss you. You knew the consequences of spending the night at his place, but you still did it anyway.

            If there was an award for the dumbest piece of shit in the world, you’ve won it.

            You saw this coming, and even though you wanted to burst into tears and start apologizing to Chanyeol, you knew what you had to do. This was what you had wanted to happen anyway, it only happened sooner than you expected.

            You swallowed back your emotions.

            “Why are you so pressed about it?”

            Chanyeol smiled—the sick kind of smile a person did when they were so tired of everything; a defeated smile. Tears started rolling down his cheeks.

            “Jesus fucking Christ, let me think about it,” he ran his fingers through his hair, tugging at the strands like he wanted to pull it off. “I guess it’s because I’m not really a big fan of sharing the girl I’m seeing with one of my friends.”

            He didn’t shout. He conversed like he did normally, except that you could feel the weight of his words; they were heavy with pain. It would’ve been better if he just yelled at you. It would’ve hurt less.

            “Is that what you think we are? We’re _seeing_ each other?”

            You tried your best to sound like a bitch. You didn’t want to hurt Chanyeol, but this was the only way for things not to get worse than they already are.

            Chanyeol laughed as he pulled at his hair with both of his hands. He then turned around and punched the wall.

            You flinched when you heard his knuckles breaking at the impact. His right hand was now cut open and bleeding. Red marks stained the wall.

            He didn’t even recoil at the pain. You doubted that he was feeling anything right now aside from anger and possibly disgust—at you, at Sehun, at everything.

            You rushed to grab his hand, but he slapped your arm away.

            “Don’t touch me.”

            Your heart was already sunken, but when you heard those words from him, it dropped at your feet. Pain spread in your chest as if you were shot by a poison arrow. Your blood felt like acid. You wanted to faint.

 _It’s what you deserve_ , your subconscious told you. _This is what you get for playing a game that you know you wouldn’t win_.

            “You knew from the start what this was, Yeol. I fucking told you. I said that we’re not in _that_ kind of relationship.”

            The blood from his hand dripped onto the carpet. You wanted to stop his bleeding. You wanted to take care of him. You wanted to rush into the bathroom and grab the first aid kit, but Chanyeol’s words rang in your ear: _Don’t touch me_. So you held yourself back.

            Your eyes were pouring now, but you forced yourself to maintain a neutral expression. This was the right thing. You were doing this for Chanyeol. You had to save him from yourself.

            Chanyeol sat down on the couch, his bad hand resting limply on his lap. His stare burned through you as if they were asking for an explanation. You wanted to tell him that it was better this way; it was better that the two of you end whatever you were doing right now before it got deeper. You couldn’t let an amazing person like him waste any more of his time on someone like you, someone selfish and disgusting.

            “Yeah, you told me those things,” Chanyeol nodded. “But I forgot them every time you looked at me with those fucking eyes that gleamed like you needed me. I forgot them every time you had your arm wrapped around mine. I forgot them every single time you come to my place and kiss me like your life depended on it. So let me fucking ask you: what do you think we are?”

            “I don’t know, Yeol!” You screamed. “I don’t know, okay? I have no fucking idea what we are because we’re just friends and you’re acting like we’re more than that!”

            It was true, to some extent.

            You and Chanyeol were friends, and the way he was acting right now seemed like he was expecting that the two of you were more than that. But what you didn’t tell him was that you felt the same way.

            The gleam that he saw in your eyes was real—you _did_ need him. You needed his warmth, you needed his chest and his arms to make you feel safe, you needed his voice to reel you back into reality whenever you spaced out. You needed him, but you couldn’t say that to his face. You needed him, but you didn’t deserve him. What he needed was someone better than you, someone whose feelings weren’t a mess, and someone who was ready to commit to him without the nagging fear in the back of their head saying that they weren’t good enough.

            You needed him, but you were going to destroy him. And he didn’t need you to do that.

            The bracelet that he had given you for Christmas felt like a thousand tons hanging on your wrist.

 _This is the right thing to do_ , you assured yourself. _You dragged it on for way too long. It’s about time you ended it_.

            Chanyeol was still staring at you, his eyes bloodshot. His eyes were leaking.

           “Friends don’t do this shit to each other,” he whispered. “They don’t fuck each other. They don’t kiss each other the same way couples do. They don’t flirt with each other. They don’t do shit like that, so don’t fucking pull that with me.”

            You sighed. You didn’t have anything else to say to him. To be fair, he was right. The relationship the two of you shared couldn’t be oversimplified into friendship.

            But you warned him. You told him that night when you stumbled into his room drunk and wanting to have sex but he turned you down. You warned him not to get carried away before you fell asleep while he sang your favorite song. _You told him_.

            “I told you not to fall for me, Yeol,” you said, your voice coming out like a whisper.

            Chanyeol let out a mocking laugh and the sound reverberated on the walls of your heart, leaving cracks in its wake.

            “Then I’m sorry for still falling in love with you,” he said as he wiped his tears away with the cuffs of his jacket. “You’re not that hard to love, honestly. I just wish that you stop putting yourself down and start letting people in.”

            You headed towards the door.

            When you left Chanyeol’s unit, Baekhyun was waiting right outside the door.

            He was leaning against the wall. His hair was a mess and his clothes were crumpled. His lips were swollen and he had questionable marks on his neck.

            It was obvious that he went to see Chanyeol’s neighbor again. It was almost funny. _Almost_. You would’ve laughed if your heart wasn’t breaking in your chest.

            “Sis,” Baekhyun said softly. “I heard yelling and… Are you okay?”

            You shook your head as you sank into Baekhyun’s chest. His arms wrapped around you and every emotion you held back inside Chanyeol’s place started pouring out of your body.

            You cried and you didn’t care who heard you. All you know is that if felt good letting out your pain in your brother’s embrace.

            “It’s okay. You’re okay,” Baekhyun whispered against your ear as he soothed your hair. “Let’s go home, okay?”

            You nodded, and the two of you headed to the elevators with your brother’s arm draped around your shoulder.

 

 

**8.**

You barely went out of your room for the entire weekend.

            A tray of food rested on top of your bedside table, untouched and gone cold. Your parents and your brother took turns in delivering it, but you didn’t eat past three spoonfuls. Whenever you forced to go beyond that, you would run straight to the bathroom, crouching on the toilet. It was as if your body was rejecting any attempt of nourishment, like you didn’t deserve to be taken care of.

            It was a Sunday, and the weather was nice enough to take a stroll in the park. The sunlight passed through your white curtains, the only source of light in your room. The clear skies were like an insult to how you were feeling; they reminded you of Chanyeol’s bright smile, but that image only formed dark clouds in your heart.

            What happened in Chanyeol’s place two days ago replayed over and over your head. It was vivid in your memory, all the tears and pain embedded into your brain. Every time you closed your eyes for too long you would see Chanyeol’s face, how hurt he was, how his tears stained his cheeks, how you sucked the life out of him.

            You _hated_ hurting people. When you and Kyungsoo broke up, you made a promise to yourself that you wouldn’t use the way he had hurt you as an excuse to hurt others. But you had no choice. You had to hurt Chanyeol. You had to take his heart in your hands and crush it so that he would hate you. You wanted him to hate you because if he saw that you were an awful person, he would turn his back and run away from you. And that was what was best for him. His life was way better without you in the picture. You were poison.

            A soft knock resounded from your door.

            Baekhyun let himself in your room because he knew all too well that you wouldn’t get up from your bed and answer it or even say “come in”. He knew how weak and tired you were, he saw it firsthand when he saw you go out of Chanyeol’s place.

            He was carrying a new tray of hot food, replacing the old one that sat beside you. He sighed and looked at you with sad eyes as he switched the two trays.

            “You need to eat something, sis,” he softly said. “Your stomach barely has anything in it and you keep on smoking. You’re killing yourself You know that, right?”

            You sat up and every muscle in your body ached. You weren’t sure if it was because you had lied on your bed for too long or if it was because the pain in your heart had somehow managed to seep through your bones.

            “I want to, Baek. You wouldn’t believe how hungry I am right now. It’s my stomach that’s acting up. I throw up everything I force myself to eat, so might as well not eat anything at all.”

            Baekhyun shook his head as he ran his fingers through his hair. “If you keep this up, I’m going to tell mom and dad to call the family doctor and stab an IV in your veins. You need to eat, for fuck’s sake.”

            You understood Baekhyun’s frustration. You were frustrated at yourself too. You felt embarrassed that you let yourself become so sad to the point that your body was slowly killing you from the inside.

            “I’m not leaving until you eat something.”

            You wanted to be left alone to wallow in your self-inflicted pain, so you grabbed the spoon and started taking small sips of soup.

            Baekhyun sat on the edge of your bed. His eyes were watching you like a hawk, making sure that you put something in your body that wasn’t water or nicotine.

            He then noticed that your hand was trembling and that the soup was spilling out of the spoon, so he took it from your hands and started feeding you.

            “I’m not a child, Baek,” you glared at him. “I am perfectly capable of feeding myself.”

            Baekhyun scoffed. “Yeah, tell that to the little puddles of soup on the tray.”

            You didn’t say anything after that and let him feed you in silence.

            The bowl finally dried up after what felt like forever and Baekhyun put away the tray from your bed.

            It felt nice, having your brother take care of you like he did when you were younger. Baekhyun was two years older than you but he started school a year late, so the two of you were only separated by one grade. Whenever you were bullied back in elementary, he would stand up to the people who hurt you.

            Naturally, as both of you got older, you slightly drifted away from one another. Baekhyun had a rebellious streak as a teenager, and he was regularly sent to the office for causing all sorts of trouble. Your parents were always called into school because of him. They started comparing the two of you, how you were always prim and proper while he was the cause of their headaches.

            This caused Baekhyun to resent you. He avoided you in school and didn’t talk to you at home when there wasn’t a need to. You accepted it even though you did nothing wrong. You stayed away from him as well as to not anger him any further.

            But when he saw how Kyungsoo devastated you, all the years of dodging each other faded into the background.

            When you came home that day, you didn’t greet anyone as you normally did and went straight up to your room. You were crying so loudly that Baekhyun heard you from his room, so he went inside yours to check up on you.

            You cried on his shoulder as much as you could that night, and ever since, he went out of his way to make you smile or laugh. He always annoyed and teased you, and even though it was a little taxing at times, at the end of the day, you had a smile on your face. You couldn’t ask for a better brother. If you had to choose who would be your brother in your next life, you would choose Baekhyun in a heartbeat.

            Years melted away as you watched him sit there and take care of you. You felt like a kid again with your big brother protecting you from harm.

          Baekhyun handed you a piece of sliced apple. “What happened in Chanyeol’s place?”

            You twirled the fruit in your hand, hesitating whether you should tell him or not. You were afraid that when he finds out, he would hate you again. You loved having Baekhyun at your side and you didn’t want to lose your brother again.

            You looked at his face to measure his expression. His eyes were soft, as if they were silently telling you that this was your brother, you could tell him anything without the fear of being judged.

            You could feel your stomach turning up again, so you quickly grab the glass of water from your bedside table to calm it down.

            When you finished drinking, Baekhyun cupped your cheeks into his gentle hands and looked straight at you. “I need to know what happened so that I can help you, so that I can say the right words.”

            When the tears started falling from your eyes, so did the words out of your mouth.

            The stress from school and from running into Kyungsoo took a toll on your heart. You went to a bar to have a drink by yourself and to unwind from life even just for a few hours. It was a Monday, so you didn’t expect to see anyone that you knew. But then Sehun showed up with Jongin and a few of their other friends whose names you didn’t know.

            Sehun and Jongin went to your table to greet you. After a small talk about school and some other things, Jongin went back to his friends but Sehun stayed behind to talk with you some more.

            The conversation then shifted to Sehun’s previous relationship that was extremely toxic, and it was when you realized that you had to end things with Chanyeol to prevent that from happening between the two of you. That’s when you formed this convoluted plan to hurt him because if you didn’t do something to make him hate you, the two of you would just push and pull at each other until it becomes a toxic cycle of worrying about being with each other, but not having each other at the same.

            One thing led to another, and you eventually found yourself in Sehun’s place. A few days after that, Chanyeol found out.

            Baekhyun was silent for a few moments before he said, “That was a shitty thing to do, sis. It was unnecessary.”

            “I know that.”

            Your eyes didn’t stop from crying. The dull ache that you were feeling last night was gone, replaced by fresh pain. Your heart felt like it was being hammered all over again after hearing those words from your brother.

            Baekhyun rested his hand on your lap. “You could’ve stopped fooling around with Chanyeol without hurting him. You wanted to prevent it from getting worse, but what you did was the exact opposite of that intention. You should’ve kept this between the two of you, but you involved Sehun too. More than that, he’s Chanyeol’s friend. Didn’t you think about how this would affect _their_ relationship as much as yours and Chanyeol’s?”

            Baekhyun was scolding you from acting so foolishly, but he spoke in a gentle voice. He knew the gravity of what you did but still, he wasn’t being harsh on you.

            “I didn’t want to hurt either of them,” you said through labored breaths. You were having trouble breathing from crying. “I just thought that it would be easier for Chanyeol to turn away from me if he knew what kind of sick person I was. If our relationship went further, I would’ve hurt him nonetheless. I’m a mess, Baek. I can’t put Chanyeol through someone like me.”

            “You need to stop getting ahead of yourself,” Baekhyun firmly said. “You haven’t even tried, so why are you so sure that you would hurt him in the end?”

            You weren’t even crying anymore. You were bawling. You felt so ashamed of yourself because you knew that what Baekhyun was saying was right. While it was true that you were afraid that you would somehow find a way to hurt Chanyeol if things got more serious, you were mostly afraid that you would get hurt again. You let this paranoia get in your head and without thinking, you turned into the person that you swore you would never become.

            You became the person who hurt people first so that they wouldn’t get the chance to hurt you. You were so scared of getting your heart broken again that you became the one who ran around and broke hearts.

            You were disgusted with yourself.

            “You said that you didn’t want to hurt him, and I _know_ that you’re not a bad person, so why are you trying so hard to be one?”

            “I don’t know.”

            That was your answer to everything. You didn’t know anymore. You were fucking clueless. You found yourself in Chanyeol’s presence, but you lost it again all at once when you realized that you were falling in love with him. Since then, nothing you did made sense anymore.

            You craved him, but you didn’t want him to get used to you. Your heart fluttered whenever he said or did something sweet, but you expected him not to feel the same while you led him on. You loved him, and you hoped that he didn’t love you because you were just a bomb waiting to explode.

            You were having a headache while trying to understand yourself. You couldn’t imagine how Chanyeol was feeling, what kind of pain he was going through right now. You were sure of one thing, though; you were sure that he was hurting more than you.

            Baekhyun stood up from where he was sitting to grab a box of tissues from your bathroom and then gave it to you.

            “I talked to him, by the way,” he said as you wiped off your tears. “Back when we were at our beach house, I told him that it would end up badly for the two of you if he didn’t clear things up.”

            You raised your eyebrows at him, unsure of what he meant by that.

            “I told him that you weren’t ready to get into a relationship yet,” Baekhyun elaborated. “I said that if he wanted to take things deeper, he would have to wait because you haven’t fully recovered from your past relationship. And when he’s given it enough time, I told him to slowly bring up if you could see him as something more than a friend that you got, uh, some benefits from.”

            You couldn’t believe that Baekhyun had talked to Chanyeol about the two of you before you even realized the potential of what your relationship could become. Baekhyun seemed like he didn’t care most of the time, but in reality, he was always two steps ahead of everyone.

            “Don’t look so surprised,” Baekhyun smiled. “I may seem slow-witted, but I know what Chanyeol was thinking of when he took a shot during our game after you said that never have you ever fallen in love with a guy you were sleeping with. I knew I had to talk to him about you. He’s my friend, but I’m not a big fan of the thought of him hurting my little sister.”

            Before you could say anything, someone knocked on your door. Baekyun stood up to see who it was, and when he opened the door, Minseok’s head popped out.

            “Why is your phone turned off?” He angrily asked. “Don’t you know how worried I was?”

            Baekhyun shot him a look as if to say that it wasn’t the best time for him to scold you. Minseok understood immediately.

            In a gentler tone, he said, “I was just worried, that’s all. I couldn’t contact you for the entire weekend and I was starting to think that something bad happened to you.”

            “You have no idea,” Baekhyun muttered. “How did you get in here anyway?”

            “Jesus, Baek. I’ve been coming here for the past year so I’m not exactly a stranger to your parents so they let me go up to her room and—what the fuck happened to your eyes?”

            Minseok rushed to your bed, only realizing now that your eyes were swollen like hell. You just gave him a tired smile because you didn’t have the energy to explain what happened all over again.

            He then looked at Baekhyun for an explanation to which Baekhyun just mouthed, _Chanyeol_ before shaking his head, indicating that it was a sensitive topic.

            “What did that little shit do to you?”

            “He didn’t do anything, Min. I was the one who did something. I hurt him.”

            You stood up from your bed, grabbed a fresh shirt and a pair of jeans from your dresser, and then headed into the bathroom to change.

            When you went out, Baekhyun and Minseok were furiously discussing something but stopped when they heard the bathroom door open. You already knew that they were talking about what happened between you and Chanyeol.

            You didn’t mind Baekhyun telling Minseok everything. Minseok was like a brother to you, so you knew that he wouldn’t hold anything against you. You also knew that he would scold you the same way Baekhyun did when he gets the chance.

            You grabbed your phone from your nighstand and started walking towards the door.

            “Where are you going?” Minseok asked.

            “I need to clean up the mess I made.”

* * *

            Your heart was racing the entire time you drove to Chanyeol’s place.

            Every step you took sent a dart to your chest. Your subconscious was telling you to turn around, go home, and leave Chanyeol alone for the rest of your life but your heart knew that you needed to do.

            You hesitated a few hundred times before you finally swallowed your pride and knocked on Chanyeol’s door.

            Chanyeol answered the door but he only opened it halfway, just enough for you to see what you hoped wasn’t what you thought it was.

            His dark hair was a mess. The plain white shirt that he had on was ruffled on one side like he quickly put it on without bothering to fix it. His neck was littered with dark splotches. His lips were smudged with what suspiciously looked like lipstick.

            You felt like you’ve just been punched in the gut.

            If it wasn’t already obvious that he just had sex, the tall girl who descended from the stairs made it official.

            “What’s taking you so long?” She asked Chanyeol.

            Your eyes stung. You looked at your feet so Chanyeol and the girl wouldn’t see you crying, and so that you wouldn’t have to address the elephant in the room.

            Your chest began to tighten. You closed your eyes to erase the image of what you just saw, but it was seared in your brain and it was making you dizzy. Your hands balled into fists as pain spread from your heart through your entire body. It felt like you were being burned alive.

 _This is what Chanyeol felt_ , you reminded yourself. _Bear with it_.

           “Yeah, just a second,” Chanyeol replied. “It’s just my, uh, groupmate for philosophy. We’re working on a paper.”

            That was a lie. You e-mailed Mr. Lee yesterday that you were doing the paper on your own, to which he replied that Chanyeol had also informed him that the two of you weren’t pushing through as partners for the second synthesis paper.

            “Just hurry back, okay?”

            Chanyeol nodded, went outside, and shut the door behind him. You haven’t moved an inch from where you stood because you were afraid that you would lose your balance if you moved a muscle in your body. The pain was overwhelming.

            “Why are you here? What do you want?”

            You wanted to throw yourself at him and hug him tightly. You wanted to cry against his chest and apologize for hurting him because you were afraid that he would hurt you first. You wanted to take back all the pain you’ve given him. You wanted to do all those things, but the image of the girl he had behind those doors resurfaced in your head, crushing your courage.

           “Stop crying and answer me,” Chanyeol said. Even though he told you to stop crying, his voice hinted that he was about to break down too.

            You looked up at him.

            This was the first good look you had of his face in two days. His face had gotten thinner. There were bags under his eyes. If you were a mess for the entire weekend, you couldn’t imagine how Chanyeol was.

            “I—I just wanted to say sorry.”

            Chanyeol sighed. “For what, exactly?”

            “I don’t even know where to start, Yeol,” you said as you shook your head. “I have so many shit to apologize for that I’ve lost count. I’m sorry for sleeping with Sehun. I’m sorry for ruining your friendship with him. I’m sorry for ruining _our_ friendship. I’m sorry for being insensitive. I’m sorry for being so scared of my own feelings that I hurt yours. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for all the shit I’ve put you through. I’m sorry being selfish and not thinking about what you would feel. I’m sorry for being an insufferable bitch. I’m sorry.”

            You took a step back. You couldn’t breathe. The tears in your eyes made your vision blurry. You leaned against the wall because you needed something solid to hold onto. The weight of the world was on your shoulder, and it was too much.

            But you deserved it. This was what you got for doing what you did.

            “I’m sorry, Yeol. I’m so fucking sorry that you have no idea. All I thought about all weekend was you, how badly I’ve hurt you. What I did was stupid. I know that. I also know that I can’t do anything to make up it to you because what I did was unforgivable. I hurt you so that I could save you from myself, because I didn’t deserve you. I didn’t deserve your kindness, your friendship, everything.”

            Chanyeol looked like he was about to cry, and you couldn’t stand the thought of him wasting tears on someone as horrible as you.

            “I knew that you were falling for me, and I started to love you as well, but my fear got the best of me and I hurt you. That’s what I’m most sorry about.”

            You knew that your apology wasn’t enough—no apology would ever be enough—but that was all you could say to him. You were a writer, but all the pain you were feeling took away all the words from your mouth.

            “I’m sorry, Yeol,” you said. “But look at me. I’m a fucking mess. This was what I was saving you from. I love you, but I still need to figure out what the hell am I.”

            You turned your back on him and started walking towards the elevators.

            You rested your head against the wall without even pressing the button. Tears wouldn’t stop falling from your eyes. Your chest felt lighter, because you’ve finally admitted to Chanyeol’s face that you loved him, but it drained the life out of you.

            That was when you felt his arms around you.

            “I’m sorry too,” Chanyeol whispered in your ear. “I’m sorry for asking so much of you when I knew that you weren’t ready.”

            You missed this. You missed his embrace. You wanted to turn around and kiss him, but you knew it wasn’t right, so you remained silent. You wanted him to let go, but you also wanted it to last forever.

            His grip on you tightened, and it made your limbs weak. You wanted to melt from his warmth; you wanted to dissolve under his touch. But his next words sent you back to Earth.

            “Did you mean it, what you said just now?” He asked. “You love me?”

            You closed your eyes and nodded.

            “I love you too.”

 

 

**9.**

You stared at your coffee cup and watched the steam rise from it. You were in the café that you and Chanyeol frequently visited to do school works together; it was one of the last places you were with him.

            You ordered the same drink and sat on the same table. The only difference was that you were alone. Chanyeol’s absence was like a big gaping hole in your chest.

            Even though you haven’t talked to each other for the past month, your last conversation was still fresh in your memory like it only happened yesterday.

            “ _I love you, but I still need to figure out what the hell am I_.”

            “ _I love you too_.”

            Not a day would pass that his voice wouldn’t ring in your ears. It was all you thought about—as you woke up, as you ate, as you went to sleep. You could still feel his arms around you when you closed your eyes for too long. He wasn’t here, but at the same, he was everywhere.

            You missed him. You would be the biggest liar in the whole world if you say that you didn’t. But to say that you simply missed him would be an understatement. You _yearned_ for him. You longed to see his smile, to breathe in his scent, to feel his skin. You ached for his kiss, for his touch, for his body. You wished that he was sitting beside you right now.

            But, as you said, you still needed to figure out what the hell you are.

            You needed to distance yourself first. You had to find answers to the riddles in your head. You wanted to give yourself to Chanyeol, but you couldn’t do that if you didn’t know who you truly were or what you really wanted.

            You were preparing yourself for a hard fall, and you were assessing if breaking yourself on impact was worth it.

            You still saw Chanyeol in school the following weeks after you last talked with each other. The two of you exchanged brief smiles, but that was about it. He stopped hanging with you and Minseok and started going with Jongin and Sehun.

            You felt relieved that he and Sehun were on good terms, and you felt even better when Minseok told you that even though Chanyeol didn’t grab lunch with the two of you anymore, he and Chanyeol still kept tabs with each other.

            The world went on even if you and Chanyeol didn’t.

            About a week ago, you stopped seeing Chanyeol around campus. You first noticed it when he didn’t attend Philosophy anymore. You wanted to ask Baekhyun or Minseok about what happened to him, but you figured that if he wanted you to know, he would have said it to you himself.

            So you let it be, and hoped that wherever he was, he was doing fine.

            “Hey,” a voice from behind you interrupted your train of thought.

            It was Kyungsoo.

            He was holding a book in his left hand and a cup of coffee in the other. He smiled at you warmly, like the two of you were some old friends who haven’t seen each other in a long time.

            He was an old friend. But you weren’t sure if you can call him that after the hell he put you through.

            “Are you waiting for someone?”

            “No.”

            He sat down his book and his coffee on the table. “Can I sit here?”

            You looked at him. You were surprised at his question. Sit here? Was he serious? Hasn’t he forgotten what happened between the two of you?

            You studied his face. He was still smiling, his lips forming a heart. You loved his heart-shaped smile. It was your favorite thing about him, and you had almost forgotten what it looked like because you haven’t seen him smile in a long time.

            And that was when you realized that your chest wasn’t hurting from him anymore. You were thinking about how you missed his smile but your heart felt nothing. Maybe it was because that something—or someone—had your heart preoccupied.

            “Sure,” you finally said.

            Kyungsoo took a seat beside you. You could sense that despite his smile, he was nervous. He ran his palms up and down his thighs, a mannerism he did whenever he wasn’t sure of what to say. You took it upon yourself to break the ice.

            “What brings you here?” You asked him as you took out your pack and lit a cigarette.

            “Oh. I don’t have classes on Mondays so I spend my Monday mornings here. I like how quiet this neighborhood is,” he replied, fidgeting with the sleeve of his coffee cup. “I didn’t expect seeing you here on days like this so I thought that I would say hi, you know. For… old time’s sake.”

            You took a drag of your stick and gave him a small smile as you exhaled smoke. “It’s not as if those old times were good, though.”

            He bit his lower lip and looked at you with tensed eyes. “I’m—I’m really sorry.”

            “It’s okay, Soo. Really. I’m over it. I’m over you. I’m done. Go live your life.”

            There was no sarcasm in your tone. You meant what you said; you were over everything. Life didn’t work out every time. Some people weren’t meant to end up together. You got it. You had the right to feel hurt about growing apart from someone, but it was ultimately up to you to decide what you were going to do with your life after that. Placing your happiness on someone else wasn’t the best thing to do, but you had to accept it if they chose not to hold it for you anymore.

            “I have so many things to be sorry for. I’m sorry for hurting you, but just so you know, I didn’t cheat on you.”

            You raised your eyebrows at him.

            Kyungsoo sighed. “It’s not true that Ji-hyun and I were already together while I was still seeing you. I have no idea how that story came up.”

            “So you’re telling me that my friends were lying to me?” You asked him as you put out your burned up cigarette on the ashtray.

            “That’s not what I was implying.” His deep voice was exuding sincerity. “I’m just saying that maybe people got the wrong impression of us. It’s true, we started to grow close with each other, but I would never cheat on you. You know me. I was your best friend before I was your boyfriend.”

            It was true. First and foremost, he was your friend. It was also true that you knew in your heart that he wouldn’t do something like that, which was why you were so shattered when you heard that he had supposedly cheated on you.

            “That’s why I broke up with you. It was because I could feel myself falling for Ji-hyun, and I couldn’t lie to you and to myself that everything between us was alright when it wasn’t. I’m sorry. I threw our years together away, and I lost a friend because of it. I lost you. I’m sorry.”

            Kyungsoo was looking straight at you. You could see in his big eyes how apologetic he was, and you had no idea that he felt that way. You thought that you were the only one who felt not good enough for someone. But there he sat, apologizing for not trying harder.

            You took his hand and smiled at him. “We can’t do anything about us, anymore. What happened, happened. It’s gone. We both did something wrong. We weren’t right for each other. That’s it. If Ji-hyun is happiness for you, then I’m happy for you.”

            “I hope the tall guy makes you happy too.”

            “The tall guy?” You thought about it for a few moments. “Ah, Chanyeol.”

            Saying Chanyeol’s name out loud for the first time in a long while warmed your heart. You smiled at the thought of Kyungsoo nicknaming him “the tall guy”.

 _You have no idea how much he makes happy_ , you wanted to say to Kyungsoo. _But I’m not sure if I can make him happy too._

            “The two of you look good together, you know,” Kyungsoo said before he took a sip of his coffee.

            “I hear that a lot,” you smiled.

            “Are you going out with him?”

            Before you could answer, your phone beeped. You blinked a few times, making sure that your eyes weren’t playing games with you as you read the name on the screen.

 **[ Chanyeol / 11:06 ]  
**_I know you haven’t opened your locker in forever, but it’s there_.

 **[ You / 11:07 ]  
** _What’s there?_

 **[ Chanyeol / 11:08 ]  
**_My answer_.

            “Soo, I have to go. Something urgent came up,” you told Kyungsoo as you shoved your stuff back in your bag. Your hands were trembling with anticipation from Chanyeol’s text message.

_His answer? Answer to what?_

            “Oh, okay. Say hi to Baekhyun for me.”

            You laughed. “Baekhyun hates you right now but I’ll tell him that you’re not an asshole after all.”

* * *

            You rushed to your room the moment you arrived at your house. Baekhyun asked you what was wrong but you ran past him, frantic to figure out what Chanyeol was talking about.

            You turned your computer on and immediately inserted a black flash drive into it as soon as it opened. You found the flash drive inside the white envelope that Chanyeol had slipped inside your locker. You weren’t sure what it contained, but you couldn’t wait to find out.

 _My answer_ , Chanyeol had said.

            You opened the flash drive’s folder on your desktop and it only contained a single file: a video clip with the file name _My Answer_.

            You played it, and it showed Chanyeol in front of his work desk back at his place, smiling at the camera.

            “Hi,” his voice resounded from the speakers. “When you see this, I’ll be on my way to Japan. I didn’t tell you, but I’ve been offered a music grant in a university there. That’s why you haven’t seen me around school often. I’ve been busy arranging my transfer papers and shit.”

            You haven’t heard his voice for a month, and even though he wasn’t there physically, the sound of him speaking through your computer was enough to warm you up.

            “I won’t be seeing you in a long while, and I’m not really happy about it. But I figured that it would be a great time for the both of us to think about some… stuff. So maybe when we see each other again, we’ll have everything figured out.”

            He was wearing a black snapback, but you could see from the few strands of hair peeking out at the sides that he had changed his hair color. It was now red.

            “Ugh, I don’t know what to say anymore,” he said as he swung his computer chair around. “I suck at this kind of thing. Anyway, I asked Baekhyun to slip this in your locker if you were wondering. And… Ah, fuck it. I’ll just play the song.”

            He pressed a button and a familiar tune started playing on a piano. You were sure that you heard this melody before, you just couldn’t wrap your mind around where.

“ _I may seem strong, I may be smiling_  
_But there are many times when I’m alone_  
_I may seem like I don’t have any worries_  
_But I have a lot to say_  
_The moment I first saw you, I was so attracted to you_  
_I didn’t weigh out my thoughts and just talked_.”

            Chanyeol’s singing filled your room. His deep and beautiful voice resonated from the speakers. The lyrics reminded you of the night you first saw each other, how easily he conversed with you even though you just met.

“ _The answer is you_  
_My answer is you_  
_I showed you my everything_  
_You are my everything,_  
_because I was so sure_.”

            When you heard the chorus, you remembered where you first heard this song. It was the song that Chanyeol wouldn’t let you listen to until he was done with it, the song that you only got to hear a few melodies from. He got mad at you when you tried to open it from his computer. You knew how hard he worked on this song, but you had no idea that it was about you.

            But then, that was when the two of you knew each other for just about two months, so how could you have possibly figured it out? He had loved you since _that_ long?

“ _I should’ve been more careful,_  
_I should’ve saved myself_  
_So I wouldn’t get hurt_  
_I’ve never felt like this before, like my breath will stop_  
_My head is filled with thoughts of you_  
_Your face, the sound of your laughter_.”

            You watched Chanyeol on the screen smiling as he listened to himself singing. The light from the computer in front of him reflected on his eyes, and they were pooling with tears.

            Chanyeol cried so easily for a guy who was over six feet tall, and even though it was funny when you thought about it, you couldn’t deny that he had a heart almost as big as him.

“ _I couldn’t say that I’ve waited for you_  
_So I’m writing then erasing_  
_Being curious about your day_  
_Takes up all of my day_.”

            Every word he sang tugged at your heart. You didn’t even notice you were crying until you felt drops of water on the back of your hand.

“ _I’ll wait for you_  
_Open your heart_  
_I can’t help my heart_  
_You are my everything_  
_It’ll be forever, my love_.”

            You heard someone knock on your door, but you ignored it. All of your focus was on your computer, on Chanyeol, on the song. Nothing else in the world mattered right now.

“ _Oh, I’m nothing_  
_Don’t leave, just let me stay by your side_  
_No matter how much I think about it_  
_Because it’s you_  
_It’s you_  
_It’s you_.”

            The song ended and Chanyeol wiped his tears with his hand before turning to smile to the camera.

            “That’s my answer,” he said. “I look forward to hearing yours.” And then the video ended.

            The video player faded into black and you felt someone’s hand on your shoulder. You turned around to see a smiling Baekhyun.

            “It’s a nice song, right?” He asked. “He submitted that song for our Advanced Composition class and he got the highest grade. Chanyeol’s already talented, but when he’s composing a song for something he feels strongly for, everything else becomes background noise. He’s an amazing musician.”

            You nodded.

            You stood up and then hugged Baekhyun.

            “I love him,” you said as you cried against your brother’s chest. “So much.”

            Baekhyun put his arms around you. “I know.”

 _That’s my answer_ , Chanyeol’s voice replayed in your mind. _I look forward to hearing yours_.

            You already had one right after hearing his song for you, but you had to wait a little longer before you could say it to him.

 

 

**10.**

You smiled as you watched everyone exchanging jokes with one another.

            Baekhyun was imitating some celebrity, earning hysterical laughs from Jongdae and Jongin. Sehun and Yixing were shouting suggestions at Baekhyun of who to impersonate next. Minseok had his arm draped around Ji-eun’s shoulder while she giggled at the guys’ silliness.

            Kyungsoo walked away laughing from the commotion to help you remove bottle caps from the beer bottles.

            “It’s nice to have everyone together again, isn’t it?” You asked him.

            “Definitely.”

            You were back in your family’s beach house to celebrate your graduation with your friends.

            The past two years have been full of ups and downs, but there you were, smiling at the sight of all your friends hanging out together as if the bad things that happened were all a bad dream. The only thing that mattered right now was how happy everyone was feeling.

            Baekhyun got a job at his dream production company, so you only got to see him a few days per week. He took a break from work just to celebrate with you and your friends and while that may seem like a small thing, it meant everything to you. He and Kyungsoo were in good terms now, after you explained to him the truth of what happened between the two of you.

            Ji-eun and Minseok got back together last year, and you couldn’t be happier for them. Seeing the two of them end up together after everything they went through made you believe in love again.

            You grew closer with Jongin and Sehun after Chanyeol left for a scholarship offer in Japan.

            It would be better if Chanyeol was also here, but everything was okay as it was. You didn’t have anything to complain about right now.

            You haven’t talked to him in two years, but not a single day passed that you didn’t think about him. Your feelings for him remained the same and you missed him terribly. Every day you wondered if he still felt the same way, if he still had the same answer for you after all this time, and your heart hurt when you thought about him forgetting about you.

            In order to distract yourself from those thoughts, you kept yourself as busy as you could. You put in extra effort in school, and in the end, you graduated with honors on your Creative Writing degree.

            You still didn’t know what to do with your life, and when you asked Minseok about his plans for the future, he said that he would work at a publication house for a short while before he pursued his master’s degree and eventually earn his PhD.

            Jongin and Sehun both planned to apply for the same dance company after the summer. Kyungsoo, on the other hand, earned a degree in Theatre Arts and was scouted by a theater production company after seeing him act in a movie that he starred in for his thesis requirement. He will begin working for them the month after the next.

            All the talk about the future made you anxious for yours and wonder about Chanyeol’s. Every day you fought the urge to call him and ask how he has been doing for the past two years, but your pride and worry got the best of you. You were ready to finally talk to him and give him your answer, but you were afraid that he wasn’t.

            You shook your head to clear your thoughts. You reminded yourself that you were here to have a good time with your friends and to not worry about anything else.

            “Okay, every single beer bottle is open. Who’s ready to get drunk?” Kyungsoo announced as he brought the ice chest full of booze into the living room.

            Everyone grabbed a bottle.

            Baekhyun stood up and held his bottle up high, proposing a toast. “This is for my sister and her friends who just got out of the shithole that’s also known as college! Welcome to the real world and I hope you all stay employed for a long time!”

            Laughter filled the living room together with the sound of bottles clinking against each other. Baekhyun never failed to put a smile on everyone’s face.

            “Do you guys want to play Never Have I Ever again?” Yixing asked.

            A resounding _no_ came from you and the other guys and Yixing held his hands up as he smiled, surrendering his idea.

            “That game ruined a lot of lives,” Baekhyun remarked as he took a swig of his beer. “It’s Yixing’s fault.”

            “You’re just mad because you couldn’t keep the vodka down,” you laughed.

            Baekhyun stuck his tongue out at you like he was five years old.

            As the night got deeper, more empty bottles littered the floor. Jongin, as expected of the one who had the lowest alcohol tolerance in the group, was sitting on the couch with his eyes half-open. Minseok had carried up Ji-eun to the room she was staying in as she was passed out from drinking. Yixing was playing his guitar while Jongdae and Kyungsoo half-sung and half-screamed a song you couldn’t understand. Baekhyun was playing beer pong with Sehun in the corner.

            But when the doorbell rang, everyone stopped whatever they were doing, stood up, and smiled.

            Baekhyun and Sehun exchanged knowing looks. Minseok rushed down the stairs, almost falling in the process. Jongin, who had almost fallen asleep, was now wide awake and clapping. Yixing and Jongdae were whispering with each other with wide smiles plastered on their faces. Even Kyungsoo was grinning.

            “Sis, why don’t you go and check who that was?” Baekhyun said as he bit back a smile.

            But you already knew who it was.

            You set the bottle you were holding on the glass coffee table, stood up, and walked towards the door. Your hands were trembling, your heart was racing, and you took small, careful steps, like you were walking on thin ice.

            You already knew who was behind that door, and even though this was the moment you’ve been preparing yourself for the past two years, your body still felt paralyzed with anxiety.

            You took a deep breath before opening the door.

            “I hope there’s still booze,” Chanyeol said with a smile as you swung the door open. “Let me guess, Jongin was the first one to get drunk.”

            You bit your lip to stop yourself from smiling from ear to ear. Your eyes started welling up with tears. You haven’t seen Chanyeol for two years and the first thing he asked you was there any booze left. It was ridiculous, but also the most Chanyeol thing you could possibly think of.

            “It’s been two years and you’re still a crybaby,” Chanyeol laughed, holding out his arms. “Come here.”

            You threw your arms at him at hugged him as tightly as you could. His fingers sank into your hair as you breathed each other’s scent for the first time in a long while. Tears were streaming down your face as you savored the moment of being in Chanyeol’s arms once again.

            The two of you didn’t say anything. You just stood there, the years and all the pain melting away as you embraced each other.

            Chanyeol was here. He was finally here. Everything else felt insignificant.

          Baekhyun cleared his throat from behind you. “Yeah, we missed you too, Chanyeol.”

            Your brother’s voice catapulted you and Chanyeol back to reality. You broke apart for each other’s grip.

            Chanyeol squeezed your hand for one last time before going inside the villa. You were still dazed that he was really here, that he was in your arms, after just imagining it in your head for the past two years.

            Cheers erupted from the living room as soon as the guys saw Chanyeol coming in.

            “I couldn’t believe your big ass mouth kept a secret that huge from me,” you said to Baekhyun.

            “Yeah, me too. I’m surprised as much as you are,” he laughed. “Consider that as your graduation gift.”

            You had your head on Chanyeol’s shoulder the entire time the group was asking him questions of how he has been.

            After graduating last year, Chanyeol immediately went to work for a big music company in Japan thanks to the good recommendations he got from the university he was offered a scholarship from. He said that he really wanted to continue working and build up his career there, but being away from home wasn’t something that he could stand. He resigned a few weeks ago, but because his seniors were impressed with his talent, he was referred to their sister company that was based here.

            “Baekhyun called me a few days ago to say that you guys were graduating,” Chanyeol said. “Of course, I needed to come home. I booked a flight right after that phone call.”

            “Sure you did,” Baekhyun scoffed.

            Chanyeol laughed. “Okay, maybe I was slightly exaggerating but you get it.”

            You didn’t say anything as the guys talked. You just sat there and took in Chanyeol’s presence. He took up the most space in your mind and now that he’s finally beside you, you just wanted to soak up everything just in case all of it suddenly slipped from your fingers, just in case you were dreaming.

            “I haven’t seen your sister this quiet,” Jongdae snickered as he looked at Baekhyun.

            “Shocking, right?” Baekhyun said and the group exploded in laughter. You couldn’t help but laugh too.

            Chanyeol was tired from his flight and most of the guys were already wasted anyway, so all of you decided to call it a night. Jongin was passed out on the couch and no one bothered waking him up as the guys went up to their rooms.

            You didn’t want to disturb Chanyeol because you knew that he would be exhausted from flying. But your body moved against your will of staying inside your room. Soon, you were knocking on his door.

            It didn’t take him long to answer it.

            “Do you have your answer now?” He asked you the moment the door opened.

            Your lips crashed into his as he locked the door behind you.

            You finally felt his lips against yours after craving them for what felt like forever, and you couldn’t get enough of how he tasted.

            His fingers dug into your sides, pushing your hips closer to him as he kissed you like he was running out of air and you were oxygen. The two of you managed to walk towards the bed without tearing away from each other. You straddled him between your legs, the skirt you had on pulled up to your sides.

            He removed your thin shirt off of you and tossed it on the floor and unclasped your bra like he did a million times before. You could feel how much he missed you from the way his mouth left love marks on your neck.

            “Yeol,” you moaned as your fingers weaved through his hair. The feeling of having his soft lips against your skin sent shocks of electricity through your entire body and you needed to hold onto to him from the overwhelming pleasure that you got from it.

            You missed the rush he gave you, how he made you forget everything with just his lips. You missed his touch; you missed how he sank his fingertips onto your skin like you were the only thing he ever wanted in this world. You missed how his chest felt against yours, how your heartbeats raced together in an upbeat rhythm. But most of all, you missed _him_. You missed having him beside you. You missed his musk, how he always smelled like sweet flowers no matter the occasion. You missed Chanyeol and no amount of kisses will ever be enough to make up for those two long years of not being able to breathe in the same air as him.

            “You have no fucking idea how much I missed you,” he said against your neck.

            You looked into his eyes and you could see his hunger in them, two years of yearning embedded in his stare. Chanyeol kept his gaze on you, his eyes traveling to every inch of your face as if he was seeing you for the first time all over again.

            “If I’m dreaming, please don’t wake me up.”

            You molded your lips into his once again to remind him that you were real, that he was not dreaming, and that you will never stray away from him ever again. The kiss was full of longing. You’ve been deprived of Chanyeol long enough and you needed him right now.

            You tugged at his bottom lip as you felt his staff growing against the sweatpants he had on, heat immediately rushing between your legs at the contact. He had his hands on your behind and he used them to push you harder towards him, and you let out a jagged breath against his lips.

            Your mouth moved to his jaw and then all the way down to his neck and collarbone, leaving sloppy kisses in its trail. In one swift motion, he turned you around so that your back was now against the mattress with him hovering over you. He pulled his shirt off him from his back while you dragged his pants downwards and soon the two of you were all skin and flesh.

            He started making circles on your bud with his thumb and you arched your back and groaned as pleasure shoot through your entire body. He didn’t stop until you were a wet mess under his touch.

            He pumped himself a few times before he spread your legs further. He let out a contented moan as he slowly slipped himself inside you, your core feeling incredibly full at his length. He stayed still for a few moments to allow you to adjust to him and when you wrapped your legs around his waist to signal him to move, he moved relentlessly.

            His eyes bore into yours as he thrusted in and out of you. Your hands were like a vice grip on his biceps, your nails digging into his skin as your stomach churned at the way he rocked his hips towards you.

            “I almost forgot how good you felt,” you teased, to which he replied by slamming into you at a more rapid pace.

            Your eyes squeezed shut as your whimpers filled the room, hoping that the walls were thick enough so that whoever was staying next door wouldn’t hear you crumbling because of Chanyeol.

            Chanyeol leaned in, his lips just barely touching yours and said, “I doubt that you would forget me.” His mouth formed a smug smile.

 _I almost forgot how cocky you were in bed, too_ , you wanted to reply, but he pounded into you harder and took all the words out of your mouth, replaced with a string of whines and profanities instead.

            Pressure started building in your core, and it only took Chanyeol one more thrust to send you spiraling into euphoria. Your legs tightened around him as your body arched upwards, your walls clamping down on him. Your tired lungs gave out a loud moan as you melted underneath him.

            All you could see was white, but Chanyeol didn’t slow down and continued smashing forward. He intertwined his fingers with yours as he inched closer and closer to finishing.

            He thrusted into you and grunted a couple more times before he finally went off and fell against your shoulder, his weight pinning down your body that was still buzzing with aftershocks.

            He caught his breath for a few moments before pulling out of you and crashing onto the space beside you. The groans that filled the room a while ago was now replaced with breathless pants as the two of you exhaled like you just ran a hundred miles.

            “Welcome back, I guess?”

            Chanyeol laughed at your remark and snaked his arm around you, engulfing you in an embrace. His lips were grazing your jaw and you could feel his breath against your wet skin, cooling you down.

            “So, what’s your answer?”

            You shifted your weight to your side so that you were now facing him and gave him a deep kiss.

            “I have the same answer as yours, Yeol. My answer is you. I choose you.”

            The answer that you’ve been searching for was right under your nose all along; you were just too distracted to notice it. You only realized it when you heard Chanyeol singing about how you were his everything.

            Choosing Chanyeol was a gamble, but you were willing to go all in even if it meant that you were putting your heart on the line. Looking at Chanyeol as he smiled at you, you have never been surer that he was a risk worth taking.

            Love, you decided, was just a game of chance: you lose some and you win some, but the probability of losing was just the same as the probability of winning. You rolled the dice, and you were ready to pay the price of giving Chanyeol your heart.

            You didn’t know how this will end, but you’ll take your chances.


	3. Postscript

“The only way to find true happiness  
is to risk being completely cut open.”

– Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters

**Author's Note:**

> Playlist (listen to it [here](https://open.spotify.com/user/mb341q9g08ycuthfo18wez2v1/playlist/0ephN4bxOiHtJ9WFhhUgBe?si=7zfeotTlQIimEHIGaegehQ)):  
> 1\. Nick Jonas - Close (feat. Tove Lo)  
> 2\. The Fray - All At Once  
> 3\. Alina Baraz - Electric (feat. Khalid)  
> 4\. Radiohead - Creep  
> 5\. Ed Sheeran - Kiss Me  
> 6\. Daniel Caesar - Get You (feat. Kali Uchis)  
> 7\. Coldplay - The Scientist  
> 8\. LANY - Hericane  
> 9\. EXO - MY ANSWER  
> 10\. Sleeping At Last - Turning Page
> 
> Thank you for reading until the end! Say hello: [Tumblr](http://pcychedelic.tumblr.com/) / [Twitter](http://twitter.com/pcychedeiic/)
> 
> If you enjoyed this fic, please consider supporting what I do by [buying me a coffee](https://ko-fi.com/pcychedelic). ♡


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